SOMETHING LIKE A BIRTHDAY.
It happened that the very day after Isabel's little outbreak of passion
was a peculiar occasion in George Gilbert's life. It was the 2nd of
July, and it was his wife's birthday,--the first birthday after her
marriage; and the young surgeon had planned a grand treat and surprise,
quite an elaborate festival, in honour of the day. He had been,
therefore, especially wounded by Isabel's ill-temper. Had he not been
thinking of her and of her pleasure at the very moment when she had
upbraided him for his lack of interest in the Alien? He did _not_ care
about the Alien. He did not appreciate
"Clotilde, Clotilde, my dark Clotilde!
With the sleepy light in your midnight glance.
We let the dancers go by to dance;
But we stayed out on the lamplit stair,
And the odorous breath of your trailing hair
Swept over my face as your whispers stole
Like a gush of melody through my soul;
Clotilde, Clotilde, my own Clotilde!"
But he loved his wife, and was anxious to please her; and he had schemed
and plotted to do her pleasure. He had hired a fly--an open fly--for the
whole day, and Mrs. Jeffson had prepared a basket with port and sherry
from the Cock, and all manner of north-country delicacies; and George
had written to Mr. Raymond, asking that gentleman, with the orphans of
course, to meet himself and his wife at Warncliffe Castle, the
show-place of the county. This Mr. Raymond had promised to do; and all
the arrangements had been carefully planned, and had been kept
profoundly secret from Isabel.
She was very much pleased when her husband told her of the festival
early on that bright summer morning, while she was plaiting her long
black hair at the little glass before the open lattice. She ran to the
wardrobe to see if she had a clean muslin dress. Yes, there it was; the
very lavender-muslin which she had worn at the Hurstonleigh picnic.
George was delighted to see her pleasure; and he sat on the window-sill
watching her as she arranged her collar and fastened a little bow of
riband at her throat, and admired herself in the glass.
"I want it to be like that day last year, Izzie; the day I asked you to
marry me. Mr. Raymond will bring the key of Hurstonleigh Grove, and
we're to drive there after we've seen the castle, and picnic there as we
did before; and then we're to go to the very identical model old woman's
to tea; and everything will be exactly the same."
Ah, Mr. George Gilbert, do you know the world so little as to be
ignorant that no day in life ever has its counterpart, and that to
endeavour to bring about an exact repetition of any given occasion is to
attempt the impossible?
It was a six-mile drive from Graybridge to Warncliffe, the grave old
country-town,--the dear old town, with shady pavements, and abutting
upper stories, pointed gables, and diamond-paned casements; the queer
old town, with wonderful churches, and gloomy archways, and steep stony
streets, and above all, the grand old castle, the black towers, and
keep, and turrets, and gloomy basement dungeons, lashed for ever and for
ever by the blue rippling water. I have never seen Warncliffe Castle
except in the summer sunshine, and my hand seems paralyzed when I try to
write of it. It is easy to invent a castle, and go into raptures about
the ivied walls and mouldering turrets; but I shrink away before the
grand reality, and can describe nothing; I see it all too plainly, and
feel the tameness of my words too much. But in summer-time this
Elizabethan Midlandshire is an English paradise, endowed with all the
wealth of natural loveliness, enriched by the brightest associations of
poetry and romance.
Mr. Raymond was waiting at the little doorway when the fly stopped, and
he gave Isabel his arm and led her into a narrow winding alley of
verdure and rockwork, and then across a smooth lawn, and under an arch
of solid masonry to another lawn, a velvety grass-plat, surrounded by
shrubberies, and altogether a triumph of landscape gardening.
They went into the castle with a little group of visitors who have just
collected on the broad steps before the door; and they were taken at
once under the convoy of a dignified housekeeper in a rustling silk
gown, who started off into a _vivâ-voce_ catalogue of the contents of
the castle-hall, a noble chamber with armour-clad effigies of
dead-and-gone warriors ranged along the walls, with notched battle-axes,
and cloven helmets, and monster antlers, and Indian wampum, and Canadian
wolf-skins, and Australian boomerangs hanging against the wainscot, with
carved oak and ebony muniment-chests upon the floor, and with three deep
embayed windows overhanging the brightest landscape, the fairest
streamlet in England.
While the housekeeper was running herself down like a musical box that
had been newly wound up, and with as much animation and expression in
her tones as there is in a popular melody interpreted by a musical box,
Mr. Raymond led Isabel to the window, and showed her the blue waters of
the Wayverne bubbling and boiling over craggy masses of rockwork, green
boulders, and pebbles that shimmered in the sunlight, and then, playing
hide-and-seek under dripping willows, and brawling away over emerald
moss and golden sand, to fall with a sudden impetus into the quiet
depths beneath the bridge.
"Look at that, my dear," said Mr. Raymond; "that isn't in the catalogue.
I'll tell you all about the castle: and we'll treat the lady in the silk
dress as they treat the organ boys in London. We'll give her
half-a-crown to move on, and leave us to look at the pictures, and the
boomerangs, and the armour, and the tapestry, and the identical
toilet-table and pin-cushion in which her gracious Majesty stuck the pin
she took out of her bonnet-string when she took luncheon with Lord
Warncliffe a year or two ago. That's the gem of the catalogue in the
housekeeper's opinion, I know. We'll look at the pictures by ourselves,
Mrs. Gilbert, and I'll tell you all about them."
To my mind, Warncliffe Castle is one of the pleasantest show-places in
the kingdom. There are not many rooms to see, nor are they large rooms.
There are not many pictures; but the few in every room are of the
choicest, and are hung on a level with the eye, and do not necessitate
that straining of the spinal column which makes the misery of most
picture galleries. Warncliffe Castle is like an elegant little dinner;
there are not many dishes, and everything is so good that you wish there
were more. And at Warncliffe the sunny chambers have the extra charm of
looking as if people lived in them. You see not only Murillos and
Titians, Lelys and Vandykes upon the walls; you see tables scattered
with books, and women's handiwork here and there; and whichever way you
turn, there is always the noisy Wayverne brawling and rippling under the
windows, and the green expanse of meadow and the glory of purple
woodland beyond.
Isabel moved through the rooms in a silent rapture; but yet there was a
pang of anguish lurking somewhere or other amid all that rapture.
Her dreams were all true, then; there were such places as this, and
people lived in them. Happy people, for whom life was all loveliness and
poetry, looked out of those windows, and lolled in those antique chairs,
and lived all their lives amidst caskets of Florentine mosaic, and
portraits by Vandyke, and marble busts of Roman emperors, and Gobelin
tapestries, and a hundred objects of art and beauty, whose very names
were a strange language to Isabel.
For some people life was like this; and for her--! She shuddered as she
remembered the parlours at Graybridge,--the shabby carpet, the faded
moreen curtains edged with rusty velvet, the cracked jars and vases on
the mantel-piece; and even if George had given her all that she had
asked--the ottoman, and the Venetian blind, and the rose-coloured
curtains--what would have been the use? her room would never have looked
like _this_. She gazed about her in a sort of walking dream, intoxicated
by the beauty of the place. She was looking like this when Mr. Raymond
led her into one of the larger rooms, and showed her a little picture in
a corner, a Tintoretto, which he said was a gem.
She looked at the Tintoretto in a drowsy kind of way. It was a very
brown gem, and its beauties were quite beyond Mrs Gilbert's
appreciation. She was not thinking of the picture. She was thinking if,
by some romantic legerdemain, she could "turn out" to be the rightful
heiress of such a castle as this, with a river like the Wayverne
brawling under her windows, and trailing willow-branches dipping into
the water. There were some such childish thoughts as these in her mind
while Mr. Raymond was enlarging upon the wonderful finish and modelling
of the Venetian's masterpiece; and she was aroused from her reverie not
by her companion's remarks, but by a woman's voice on the other side of
the room.
"You so rarely see that contrast of fair hair and black eyes," said the
voice; "and there is something peculiar in those eyes."
There was nothing particular in the words: it was the tone in which they
were spoken that caught Isabel Gilbert's ear--the tone in which Lady
Clara Vere de Vere herself might have spoken; a tone in winch there was
a lazy hauteur softened by womanly gentleness,--a drawling accent which
had yet no affectation, only a kind of liquid carrying on of the voice,
like a _legato_ passage in music.
"Yes," returned another voice, which had all the laziness and none of
the hauteur, "it is a pretty face. Joanna of Naples, isn't it? she was
an improper person, wasn't she? threw some one out of a window, and made
herself altogether objectionable."
Mr. Raymond wheeled round as suddenly as if he had received an electric
shock, and ran across the room to a gentleman who was lounging in a
half-reclining attitude upon one of the broad window-seats.
"Why, Roland, I thought you were at Corfu!"
The gentleman got up, with a kind of effort and the faintest suspicion
of a yawn; but his face brightened nevertheless, as he held out his hand
to Isabel's late employer.
"My dear Raymond, how glad I am to see you! I meant to ride over
to-morrow morning, for a long day's talk. I only came home last night,
to please my uncle and cousin, who met me at Baden and insisted on
bringing me home with them. You know Gwendoline? ah, yes, of course you
do."
A lady with fair banded hair and an aquiline nose--a lady in a bonnet
which was simplicity itself, and could only have been produced by a
milliner who had perfected herself in the supreme art of concealing her
art--dropped the double eye-glass through which she had been looking at
Joanna of Naples, and held out a hand so exquisitely gloved that it
looked as if it had been sculptured out of grey marble.
"I'm afraid Mr. Raymond has forgotten me," she said "papa and I have
been so long away from Midlandshire."
"And Lowlands was beginning to look quite a deserted habitation. I used
to think of Hood's haunted house whenever I rode by your gates, Lady
Gwendoline. But you have come home for good now? as if _you_ could come
for anything _but_ good," interjected Mr. Raymond, gallantly. "You have
come with the intention of stopping, I hope."
"Yes," Lady Gwendoline answered, with something like a sigh; "papa and I
mean to settle in Midlandshire; he has let the Clarges Street house for
a time; sold his lease, at least, I think; or something of that sort.
And we know every nook and corner of the Continent. So I suppose that
really the best thing we can do is to settle at Lowlands. But I suppose
we sha'n't keep Roland long in the neighbourhood. He'll get tired of us
in a fortnight, and run away to the Pyrenees, or Cairo, or Central
Africa; 'anywhere, anywhere, out of the world!'"
"It isn't of _you_ that I shall get tired, Gwendoline," said the
gentleman called Roland, who had dropped back into his old lounging
attitude on the window-seat. "It's myself that bores me; the only bore a
man can't cut. But I'm not going to run away from Midlandshire. I shall
go in for steam-farming, and agricultural implements, and drainage. I
should think drainage now would have a very elevating influence upon a
man's mind; and I shall send my short-horns to Smithfield next
Christmas. And you shall teach me political economy, Raymond; and we'll
improve the condition of the farm-labourer; and we'll offer a prize for
the best essay on, say, classical agriculture as revealed to us in the
writings of Virgil--that's the sort of thing for the farm-labourer, I
should think--and Gwendoline shall give the prizes: a blue riband and a
gold medal, and a frieze coat, or a pair of top-boots."
Isabel still lingered by the Tintoretto. She was aghast at the fact that
Mr. Raymond knew, and was even familiar with, these beings. Yes;
Beings--creatures of that remote sphere which she only knew in her
dreams. Standing near the Tintoretto, she ventured to look very timidly
towards these radiant creatures.
What did she see? A young man half reclining in the deep embrasure of a
window, with the summer sunshine behind him, and the summer breezes
fluttering his loose brown hair--that dark rich brown which is only a
warmer kind of black. She saw a man upon whom beneficent or capricious
Nature, in some fantastic moment, had lavished all the gifts that men
most covet and that women most admire. She saw one of the handsomest
faces ever seen since Napoleon, the young conqueror of Italy, first
dazzled regenerated France; a kind of face that is only familiar to us
in a few old Italian portraits; a beautiful, dreamy, perfect face,
exquisite alike in form and colour. I do not think that any words of
mine can realize Roland Lansdell's appearance; I can only briefly
catalogue the features, which were perfect in their way, and yet formed
so small an item in the homogeneous charm of this young man's
appearance. The nose was midway betwixt an aquiline and a Grecian, but
it was in the chiselling of the nostril, the firmness and yet delicacy
of the outline, that it differed from other noses; the forehead was of
medium height, broad, and full at the temples; the head was strong in
the perceptive faculties, very strong in benevolence, altogether wanting
in destructiveness; but Mr. Raymond could have told you that veneration
and conscientiousness were deficient in Roland Lansdell's cranium,--a
deficiency sorely to be lamented by those who knew and loved the young
man. His eyes and mouth formed the chief beauty of his face; and yet I
can describe neither, for their chief charm lay in the fact that they
were indescribable. The eyes were of a nondescript colour; the mouth was
ever varying in expression. Sometimes you looked at the eyes, and they
seemed to you a dark bluish-grey; sometimes they were hazel; sometimes
you were half beguiled into fancying them black. And the mouth was
somehow in harmony with the eyes; inasmuch as looking at it one minute
you saw an expression of profound melancholy in the thin flexible lips;
and then in the next a cynical smile. Very few people ever quite
understood Mr. Lansdell, and perhaps this was his highest charm. To be
puzzled is the next thing to being interested; to be interested is to be
charmed. Yes, capricious Nature had showered her gifts upon Roland
Lansdell. She had made him handsome, and had attuned his voice to a low
melodious music, and had made him sufficiently clever; and, beyond all
this, had bestowed upon him that subtle attribute of grace, which she
and she alone can bestow. He was always graceful. Involuntarily and
unconsciously he fell into harmonious attitudes. He could not throw
himself into a chair, or rest his elbow upon a table, or lean against
the angle of a doorway, or stretch himself full-length upon the grass to
fall asleep with his head upon his folded arms, without making himself
into a kind of picture. He looked like a picture just now as he lounged
in the castle window, with his face turned towards Mr. Raymond.
The lady, who was called Lady Gwendoline, put up her eye-glass to look
at another picture; and in that attitude Isabel had time to contemplate
her, and saw that she too was graceful, and that in every fold of her
simple dress--it was only muslin, but quite a different fabric from
Isabel's muslin--there was an indescribable harmony which stamped her as
the creature of that splendid sphere which the girl only knew in her
books. She looked longer and more earnestly at Lady Gwendoline than at
Roland Lansdell, for in this elegant being she saw the image of herself,
as she had fancied herself so often--the image of a heartless
aristocratic divinity, for whose sake people cut their throats, and
broke blood-vessels, and drowned themselves.
George came in while his wife was looking at Lady Gwendoline, and Mr.
Raymond suddenly remembered the young couple whom he had taken upon
himself to chaperone.
"I must introduce you to some new friends of mine, Roland," he said;
"and when you are ill you must send for Mr. Gilbert of Graybridge, who,
I am given to understand, is a very clever surgeon, and whom I _know_ to
have the best moral region I ever had under my hand. Gilbert, my dear
boy, this is Roland Lansdell of Mordred Priory; Lady Gwendoline, Mrs.
Gilbert--Mr. Lansdell. But you know something about my friend Roland, I
think, don't you, Isabel?"
Mrs. Gilbert bowed and smiled and blushed in a pleasant bewilderment. To
be introduced, to two Beings in this off-hand manner was almost too much
for Mr. Sleaford's daughter. A faint perfume of jasmine and
orange-blossom floated towards her from Lady Gwendoline's handkerchief,
and she seemed to see the fair-haired lady who smiled at her, and the
dark-haired gentleman who had risen at her approach, through an odorous
mist that confused her senses.
"I think you know something of my friend Roland," Mr. Raymond repeated;
"eh, my dear?"
"Oh, n--no indeed," Isabel stammered; "I never saw--"
"You never saw _him_ before to-day," answered Mr. Raymond, laying his
hand on the young man's shoulder with a kind of protecting tenderness in
the gesture. "But you've read his verses; those pretty drawing-room
Byronics, that refined and anglicised Alfred-de-Musset-ism, that you
told me you are so fond of:--don't you remember asking me who wrote the
verses, Mrs. Gilbert? I told you the Alien was a country squire; and
here he is--a Midlandshire squire of high degree, as the old ballad has
it."
Isabel's heart gave a great throb, and her pale face flushed all over
with a faint carnation. To be introduced to a Being was something, but
to be introduced to a Being who was also a poet, and the very poet whose
rhapsodies were her last and favourite idolatry! She could not speak.
She tried to say something--something very commonplace, to the effect
that the verses were very pretty, and she liked them very much, thank
you--but the words refused to come, and her lips only trembled. Before
she could recover her confusion, Mr. Raymond had hooked his arm through
that of Roland Lansdell, and the two men had walked off together,
talking with considerable animation; for Charles Raymond was a kind of
adopted father to the owner of Mordred Priory, and was about the only
man whom Roland had ever loved or trusted.
Isabel was left by the open window with Lady Gwendoline and George,
whose common sense preserved him serene and fearless in the presence of
these superior creatures.
"You like my cousin's poetry, then, Mrs. Gilbert?" said Lady Gwendoline.
Her cousin! The dark-haired being was cousin to this fair-haired being
in the Parisian bonnet,--a white-chip bonnet, with just one feathery
sprig of mountain heather, and broad thick white-silk strings, tied
under an aristocratic chin--a determined chin, Mr. Raymond would have
told Isabel.
Mrs. Gilbert took heart of grace now that Roland Lansdell was out of
hearing, and said, "Oh, yes; she was very, very fond of the 'Alien's
Dreams;' they were so sweetly pretty."
"Yes, they are pretty." Lady Gwendoline said, seating herself by the
window, and playing with her bonnet-strings as she spoke; "they are very
graceful. Do sit down, Mrs. Gilbert; these show-places are so fatiguing.
I am waiting for papa, who is talking politics with some Midlandshire
people in the hall. I am very glad you like Roland's verses. They're not
very original; all the young men write the same kind of poetry
nowadays--a sort of mixture of Tennyson, and Edgar Poe, and Alfred de
Musset. It reminds me of Balfe's music, somehow; it pleases, and one
catches the melody without knowing how or why. The book made quite a
little sensation. The 'Westminster' was very complimentary, but the
'Quarterly' was dreadful. I remember Roland reading the article and
laughing at it; but he looked like a man who tries to be funny in tight
boots, and he called it by some horrible slang term--'a slate,' I think
he said."
Isabel had nothing to say to this. She had never heard that the
"Quarterly" was a popular review; and, indeed, the adjective "quarterly"
had only one association for her, and that was rent, which had been
almost as painful a subject as taxes in the Camberwell household. Lady
Gwendoline's papa came in presently to look for his daughter. He was
Angus Pierrepoint Aubrey Amyott Pomphrey, Earl of Ruysdale; but he wore
a black coat and grey trousers and waistcoat, just like other people,
and had thick boots, and didn't look a bit like an earl, Isabel thought.
He said, "Haw, hum--yes, to be sure, my dear," when Lady Gwendoline told
him she was ready to go home; "been talking to Witherston--very good
fellow, Witherston--wants to get his son returned for Conventford,
gen'ral 'lection next year, lib'ral int'rest--very gentlemanly young
f'ler, the son;" and then he went to look for Roland, whom he found in
the next room with Charles Raymond; and then Lady Gwendoline wished
Isabel good morning, and said something very kind, to the effect that
they should most likely meet again before long, Lowlands being so near
Graybridge; and then the Earl offered his arm to his daughter.
She took it, but she looked back at her cousin, who was talking to Mr.
Raymond, and glancing every now and then in a half-amused, half-admiring
way at Isabel.
"I am so glad to think you like my wretched scribble, Mrs. Gilbert," he
said, going up to her presently.
Isabel blushed again, and said, "Oh, thank you; yes, they are very
pretty;" and it was as much as she could do to avoid calling Mr.
Lansdell "Sir" or "Your lordship."
"You are coming with us, I suppose, Roland?" Lady Gwendoline said.
"Oh, yes,--that is to say. I'll see you to the carriage."
"I thought you were coming to luncheon."
"No; I meant to come, but I must see that fellow Percival, the lawyer,
you know, Gwendoline, and I want to have a little more talk with
Raymond. You'll go on and show Mrs. Gilbert the Murillo in the next
room, Raymond? and I'll run and look for my cousin's carriage, and then
come back."
"We can find the carriage very well without you, Roland," Lady
Gwendoline answered quickly. "Come, papa."
The young man stopped, and a little shadow darkened over his face.
"Did you really ask me to luncheon?" he said.
"You really volunteered to come, after breakfast this morning, when you
proposed bringing us here."
"Did I? Oh, very well; in that case I shall let the Percival business
stand over; and I shall ride to Oakbank to-morrow morning, Raymond, and
lie on the grass and talk to you all day long, if you'll let me waste
your time for once in a way. Good-bye; good morning, Mrs. Gilbert. By
the bye, how do you mean to finish the day, Raymond?"
"I'm going to take Mr. and Mrs. Gilbert to Hurstonleigh Grove; or rather
they take me, for they've brought a basket that reminds one of the
Derby-day. We're going to picnic in the grove, and drink tea at a
cottage in honour of Isabel's--Mrs. Gilbert's--birthday."
"You must come and picnic at Mordred some day. It's not as pretty as
Hurstonleigh, but we'll manage to find a rustic spot. If you care for
partridges, Mr. Gilbert, you'll find plenty in the woods round Mordred
next September."
The young man put on his hat, and went after his cousin and her father.
Isabel saw him walk along the bright vista of rooms, and disappear in a
burst of sunshine that flooded the great hall when the door was opened.
The beings were gone. For a brief interval she had been breathing the
poetry of life; but she fell back now into the sober prose, and thought
that half the grandeur of the castle was gone with those aristocratic
visitors.
"And how do you like my young kinsman?" Mr. Raymond asked presently.
Isabel looked at him with surprise.
"He is your relation--Mr. Lansdell?"
"Yes. My mother was a Lansdell. There's a sort of cousin-ship between
Roland and me. He's a good fellow--a very noble-hearted, high-minded
young fellow; but--"
But what? Mr. Raymond broke off with so deep a sigh, that Isabel
imagined an entire romance upon the strength of the inspiration. Had he
done anything wicked? that dark beautiful creature, who only wanted the
soul-harrowing memory of a crime to render him perfect. Had he fled his
country, like Byron? or buried a fellow-creature in a cave, like Mr.
Aram? Isabel's eyes opened to their widest extent; and Charles Raymond
answered that inquiring glance.
"I sigh when I speak of Roland," he said, "because I know the young man
is not happy. He stands quite alone in the world, and has more money
than he knows how to spend; two very bad things for a young man. He's
handsome and fascinating,--another disadvantage; and he's brilliant
without being a genius. In short, he's just the sort of man to dawdle
away the brightest years of his life in the drawing-rooms of a lot of
women, and take to writing cynical trash about better men in his old
age. I can see only one hope of redemption for him, and that is a happy
marriage; a marriage with a sensible woman, who would get the whip-hand
of him before he knew where he was. All the luckiest and happiest men
have been henpecked. Look at the fate of the men who won't be henpecked.
Look at Swift: he was a lord of the creation, and made the women fear
him; look at him drivelling and doting under the care of a servant-maid.
Look at Sterne; and Byron, who outraged his wife in fact, and satirized
her in fiction. Were their lives so much the better because they scorned
the gentle guidance of the apron-string? Depend upon it, Mrs. Gilbert,
the men who lead great lives, and do noble deeds, and die happy deaths,
are married men who obey their wives. I'm a bachelor; so of course I
speak without prejudice. I do most heartily wish that Roland Lansdell
may marry a good and sensible woman."
"A good and sensible woman!"
Isabel gave an involuntary shudder. Surely, of all the creatures upon
this over-populated earth, a sensible woman was the very last whom
Roland Lansdell ought to marry. He should marry some lovely being in
perpetual white muslin, with long shimmering golden hair,--the dark men
always married fair women in Isabel's novels,--a creature who would sit
at his feet, and watch with him, as Astarte watched with Manfred, till
dismal hours in the silent night; and who should be consumptive, and
should die some evening--promiscuously, as Mrs. Gamp would say--with
flowers upon her breast, and a smile upon her face.
Isabel knew very little more of the pictures, or the men in armour, or
the cannon in the chambers that yet remained to be seen at Warncliffe
Castle. She was content to let Mr. Raymond and her husband talk. George
admired the cannon, and the old-fashioned locks and keys, and the model
of a cathedral made by a poor man out of old champagne corks, and a few
other curiosities of the same order; and he enjoyed himself, and was
happy to see that his wife was pleased. He could tell that, by the smile
upon her lips, though she said so little.
The drive from Warncliffe to Hurstonleigh Grove was as beautiful as the
drive from Graybridge to Warncliffe; for this part of Midlandshire is a
perpetual park. Isabel sat back in the carriage, and thought of Lady
Gwendoline's aristocratic face and white-chip bonnet, and wondered
whether she was the sensible woman whom Roland Lansdell would marry.
They would be a very handsome couple. Mrs. Gilbert could fancy them
riding Arabs--nobody worth speaking of ever rode anything but Arab
horses, in Isabel's fancy--in Rotten Row. She could see Lady Gwendoline
with a cavalier hat and a long sweeping feather, and Roland Lansdell
bending over her horse's neck to talk to her, as they rode along. She
fancied them in that glittering saloon, which was one of the stock
scenes always ready to be pushed on the stage of her imagination. She
fancied them in the midst of that brilliant supernumerary throng who
wait upon the footsteps of heroes and heroines. She pictured them to
herself going down to the grave through an existence of dinner-parties,
and Rotten Row, and balls, and Ascot cups. Ah, what a happy life! what a
glorious destiny!
The picnic seemed quite a tame thing after these reveries in the
carriage. The orphans met their uncle at the lodge-gate; and they all
went across the grass, just as they had gone before, to the little low
iron gate which Mr. Raymond was privileged to open with a special key;
and into the grove, where the wonderful beeches and oaks made a faint
summer darkness.
Was it the same grove? To Isabel it looked as if it had been made
smaller since that other picnic; and the waterfall, and the woodland
vistas, and the winding paths, and the arbour where they were to
dine,--it was all very well for the orphans to clap their hands, and
disport themselves upon the grass, and dart off at a tangent every now
and then to gather inconvenient wild-flowers; but, after all, there was
nothing so very beautiful in Hurstonleigh Grove.
Isabel wandered a little way by herself, while Mr. Raymond and George
and the orphans unpacked the basket. She liked to be alone, that she
might think of Lady Gwendoline and her cousin. Lady Gwendoline
Pomphrey--oh, how grand it sounded! Why, to have such a name as that
would alone be bliss; but to be called Gwendoline Pomphrey, and to wear
a white-chip bonnet with that heavenly sprig of heather just trembling
on the brim, and those broad, carelessly tied, unapproachable strings!
And then, like the sudden fall of a curtain in a brilliant theatre, the
scene darkened, and Isabel thought of her own life--the life to which
she must go back when it was dark that night: the common parlour, or the
best parlour,--what was the distinction, in their dismal wretchedness,
that one should be called better than the other?--- the
bread-and-cheese, the radishes,--and, oh, how George could eat radishes,
crunch, crunch, crunch!--till madness would have been relief. This
unhappy girl felt a blank despair as she thought of her commonplace
home,--her home for ever and ever,--unbrightened by a hope, unsanctified
by a memory; her home, in which she had a comfortable shelter, and
enough to eat and to drink, and decent garments with which to cover
herself; and where, had she been a good or a sensible young woman, she
ought of course to have been happy.
But she was not happy. The slow fever that had been burning so long in
her veins was now a rapid and consuming fire. She wanted a bright life,
a happy life, a beautiful life; she wanted to be like Lady Gwendoline,
and to live in a house like Warncliffe Castle. It was not that she
envied Lord Ruysdale's daughter, remember; envy had no part in her
nature. She admired Gwendoline Pomphrey too much to envy her. She would
like to have been that elegant creature's youngest sister, and to have
worshipped her and imitated her in a spirit of reverence. She had none
of the radical's desire to tear the trappings from the bloated
aristocrat; she only wanted to be an aristocrat too, and to wear the
same trappings, and to march through life to the same music.
George came presently, very much out of breath, to take her back to the
arbour where there was a lobster salad, and that fine high-coloured
Graybridge sherry, and some pale German wine which Mr. Raymond
contributed to the feast.
The orphans and the two gentlemen enjoyed themselves very much. Mr.
Raymond could talk about medicine as well as political economy; and he
and George entered into a conversation in which there were a great many
hard words. The orphans ate--to do that was to be happy; and Isabel sat
in a corner of the arbour, looking dreamily out at the shadows on the
grass, and wondering why Fate had denied her the privilege of being an
earl's daughter.
The drowsy atmosphere of the hot summer's afternoon, the Rhine wine, and
the sound of his companion's voice, had such a pleasant influence upon
Mr. Raymond, that he fell asleep presently while George was talking; and
the young man, perceiving this, produced a Midlandshire newspaper, which
he softly unfolded, and began to read.
"Will you come and gather some flowers, Izzie?" whispered one of the
orphans. "There are wild roses and honeysuckle in the lane outside. Do
come!"
Mrs. Gilbert was very willing to leave the arbour. She wandered away
with the two children along those lonely paths, which now sloped
downwards into a kind of ravine, and then wound upwards to the grove.
The orphans had a good deal to say to their late governess. They had a
new instructress, and "she isn't a bit like you, dear Mrs. Gilbert,"
they said; "and we love you best, though she's very kind, you know, and
all that; but she's old, you know, very old,--more than thirty; and she
makes us hem cambric frills, and does _go on so_ if we don't put away
our things; and makes us do such horrid sums; and instead of telling us
stories when we're out with her, as you used,--oh, don't you remember
telling us Pelham? how I love Pelham, and Dombey!--about the little boy
that died, and Florence--she teaches us botany and jology" (the orphans
called it 'jology'), "and tertiary sandstone, and old red formations,
and things like that; and oh, dear Izzie, I wish you never had been
married."
Isabel smiled at the orphans, and kissed them, when they entwined
themselves about her. But she was thinking of the Alien's dreams, and
whether Lady Gwendoline was the "Duchess! with the glittering hair and
cruel azure eyes," regarding whom the Alien was cynical, not to say
abusive. Mrs. Gilbert felt as if she had never read the Alien half
enough. She had seen him, and spoken to him,--a real poet, a real,
living, breathing poet, who only wanted to lame himself, and turn his
collars down, to become a Byron.
She was walking slowly along the woodland pathway, with the orphans
round about her, like a modern Laocoon family without the serpents, when
she was startled by a rustling of the branches a few paces from her, and
looking up, with a sudden half-frightened glance, she saw the tall
figure of a man between her and the sunlight.
The man was Mr. Roland Lansdell, the author of "An Alien's Dreams."
"I'm afraid I startled you, Mrs. Gilbert," he said, taking off his hat
and standing bareheaded, with the shadows of the leaves flickering and
trembling about him like living things. "I thought I should find Mr.
Raymond here, as he said you were going to picnic, and I want so much to
talk to the dear old boy. So, as they know me at the lodge, I got them
to let me in."
Isabel tried to say something; but the orphans, who were in no way
abashed by the stranger's presence, informed Mr. Lansdell that their
Uncle Charles was asleep in the arbour where they had dined.--"up
there." The elder orphan pointed vaguely towards the horizon as she
spoke.
"Thank you; but I don't think I shall find him very easily. I don't know
half the windings and twistings of this place."
The younger orphan informed Mr. Lansdell that the way to the arbour was
quite straight,--he couldn't miss it.
"But you don't know how stupid I am," the gentleman answered, laughing.
"Ask your uncle if I'm not awfully deficient in the organ of locality.
Would you mind--but you were going the other way, and it seems so
selfish to ask you to turn back; yet if you would take compassion upon
my stupidity, and show me the way--?"
He appealed to the orphans, but he looked at Isabel. He looked at her
with those uncertain eyes,--blue with a dash of hazel, hazel with a
tinge of blue,--eyes that were always half hidden under the thick fringe
of their lashes, like a glimpse of water glimmering athwart
overshadowing rushes.
"Oh, yes, if you like," the orphans cried simultaneously; "we don't mind
going back a bit."
They turned as they spoke, and Isabel turned with them. Mr. Lansdell put
on his hat, and walked amongst the long grass beside the narrow pathway.
The orphans were very lively, and fraternized immediately with Mr.
Lansdell. They were Mr. Raymond's nieces? then they were his poor cousin
Rosa Harlow's children, of whom he had heard so much from that dear good
Raymond? If so, they were almost cousins of his, Mr. Lansdell went on to
say, and they must come and see him at Mordred. And they must ask Mrs.
Gilbert to come with them, as they seemed so fond of her.
The girls had plenty to say for themselves. Yes; they would like very
much to come to Mordred Priory; it was very pretty; their Uncle Charles
had shown them the house one day when he took them out for a drive. It
would be capital fun to come, and to have a picnic in the grounds, as
Mr. Lansdell proposed. The orphans were ready for anything in the way of
holiday-making. And for Isabel, she only blushed, and said, "Thank you,"
when Roland Lansdell talked of her visiting Mordred with her late
charges. She could not talk to this grand and beautiful creature, who
possessed in his own person all the attributes of her favourite heroes.
How often this young dreamer of dreams had fancied herself in such
companionship as this; discoursing with an incessant flow of brilliant
persiflage, half scornful, half playful; holding her own against a
love-stricken marquis; making as light of a duke as Mary Queen of Scots
ever made of a presumptuous Chastelar! And now that the dream was
realized; now that this splendid Byronic creature was by her side,
talking to her, trying to make her answer him, looking at her athwart
those wondrous eyelashes,--she was stricken and dumbfounded; a
miserable, stammering school-girl; a Pamela, amazed and bewildered by
the first complimentary address of her aristocratic persecutor.
She had a painful sense of her own deficiency; she knew all at once that
she had no power to play the part she had so often fancied herself
performing to the admiration of supernumerary beholders. But with all
this pain and mortification there mingled a vague delicious happiness.
The dream had come true at last. _This_ was romance--_this_ was life.
She knew now what a pallid and ghastly broker's copy of a picture that
last year's business had been; the standing on the bridge to be
worshipped by a country surgeon; the long tedious courtship; the dowdy,
vulgar, commonplace wedding,--she knew now how poor and miserable a
mockery all that had been. She looked with furtive glances at the tall
figure bending now and then under the branches of the trees; the tall
figure in loose garments, which, in the careless perfection of their
fashion, were so unlike anything she had ever seen before; the wonderful
face in which there was the mellow fight and colour of a Guido. She
stole a few timid glances at Mr. Lansdell, and made a picture of him in
her mind, which, like or unlike, must be henceforth the only image by
which she would recognize or think of him. Did she think of him as what
he was,--a young English gentleman, idle, rich, accomplished, and with
no better light to guide his erratic wanderings than an uncertain
glimmer which he called honour? Had she thought of him thus, she would
have been surely wiser than to give him so large a place in her mind, or
any place at all. But she never thought of him in this way. He was all
this; he was a shadowy and divine creature, amenable to no earthly laws.
He was here now, in this brief hour, under the flickering sunlight and
trembling shadows, and to-morrow he would melt away for ever and ever
into the regions of light, which were his every-day habitation.
What did it matter, then, if she was fluttered and dazed and intoxicated
by his presence? What did it signify if the solid earth became empyrean
air under this foolish girl's footsteps? Mrs. Gilbert did not even ask
herself these questions. No consciousness of wrong or danger had any
place in her mind. She knew nothing, she thought nothing; except that a
modern Lord Byron was walking by her side, and that it was a very little
way to the arbour.