THE FIRST WARNING.
Mrs. Gilbert recovered very quickly from her fainting-fit. She had been
frightened by Mr. Lansdell's story, she said, and the heat had made her
dizzy. She sat very quietly upon a sofa, in the drawing-room, with one
of the orphans on each side of her, while Brown Molly was being
harnessed.
Lady Gwendoline went away with her father, after bidding Mrs. Gilbert
rather a cool good morning. The Earl of Ruysdale's daughter did not
approve of the fainting-fit, which she was pleased to call Mrs.
Gilbert's extraordinary demonstration.
"If she were a single woman, I should fancy she was trying to fascinate
Roland," Lady Gwendoline said to her father, as they drove homewards.
"What can possibly have induced him to invite those people to Mordred?
The man is a clod, and the woman a nonentity; except when she chooses to
make an exhibition of herself by fainting away. That sort of person is
always fainting away, and being knocked down by feathers, and going
unexpectedly into impossible hysterics; and so on."
But if Lady Gwendoline was unkind to the Doctor's Wife, Roland was kind;
dangerously, bewilderingly kind. He was _so_ anxious about Isabel's
health. It was his fault, entirely his fault, that she had fainted. He
had kept her standing under the blazing sun while he told his stupid
story. He should never forgive himself, he said. And he would scarcely
accept George Gilbert's assurance that his wife was all right. He rang
the bell, and ordered strong tea for his visitors. With his own hands he
closed the Venetian shutters, and reduced the light to a cool dusky
glimmer. He begged Mr. Gilbert to allow him to order a close carriage
for his wife's return to Graybridge.
"The gig shall be sent home to you to-night," he said; "I am sure the
air and dust will be too much for Mrs. Gilbert."
But Mr. Raymond hereupon interfered, and said the fresh air was just the
very thing that Isabel wanted, to which opinion the lady herself
subscribed. She did not want to cause trouble, she said: she would not
for all the world have caused _him_ trouble, she thought: so the gig
was brought round presently, and George drove his wife away, under the
Norman archway by which they had entered in the fresh noonday sun. The
young man was in excellent spirits, and declared that he had enjoyed
himself beyond measure--these undemonstrative people always declare that
they enjoy themselves--but Isabel was very silent and subdued; and when
questioned upon the subject, said that she was tired.
Oh, how blank the world seemed after that visit to Mordred Priory! It
was all over. This one supreme draught of bliss had been drained to the
very dregs. It would be November soon, and Roland Lansdell would go
away. He would go before November, perhaps: he would go suddenly,
whenever the fancy seized him. Who can calculate the arrangements of the
Giaour or Sir Reginald Glanville? At any moment, in the dead darkness of
the moonless night, the hero may call for his fiery steed, and only the
thunder of hurrying hoofs upon the hard high-road may bear witness of
his departure.
Mr. Lansdell might leave Mordred at any hour in the long summer day,
Isabel thought, as she stood at the parlour window looking out at the
dusty lane, where Mrs. Jeffson's fowls were pecking up stray grains of
wheat that had been scattered by some passing wain. He might be gone
now,--yes, now, while she stood there thinking of him. Her heart seemed
to stop beating as she remembered this. Why had he ever invited her to
Mordred? Was it not almost cruel to open the door of that paradise just
a little way, only to shut it again when she was half blinded by the
glorious light from within? Would he ever think of her, this grand
creature with the dark pensive eyes, the tender dreamy eyes that were
never the same colour for two consecutive minutes? Was she anything to
him, or was that musical lowering of his voice common to him when he
spoke to women? Again and again, and again and again, she went over all
the shining ground of that day at Mordred; and the flowers, and glass,
and pictures, and painted windows, and hothouse fruit, only made a kind
of variegated background, against which _he_ stood forth paramount and
unapproachable.
She sat and thought of Roland Lansdell, with some scrap of
never-to-be-finished work lying in her lap. It was better than reading.
A crabbed little old woman who kept the only circulating library in
Graybridge noted a falling-off in her best customer about this time. It
was better than reading, to sit through all the length of a hot August
afternoon thinking of Roland Lansdell. What romance had ever been
written that was equal to this story; this perpetual fiction, with a
real hero dominant in every chapter? There was a good deal of repetition
in the book, perhaps; but Isabel was never aware of its monotony.
It was all very wicked of course, and a deep and cruel wrong to the
simple country surgeon, who ate his dinner, and complained of the
underdone condition of the mutton, upon one side of the table, while
Isabel read the inexhaustible volume on the other. It was very wicked;
but Mrs. Gilbert had not yet come to consider the wickedness of her
ways. She was a very good wife, very gentle and obedient; and she
fancied she had a right to furnish the secret chambers of her mind
according to her own pleasure. What did it matter if a strange god
reigned in the temple, so long as the doors were for ever closed upon
his awful beauty; so long as she rendered all due service to her liege
lord and master? He was her lord and master, though his fingers were
square at the tips, and he had an abnormal capacity for the consumption
of spring-onions. Spring-onions! all-the-year-round onions, Isabel
thought; for those obnoxious bulbs seemed always in season at
Graybridge. She was very wicked; and she thought perpetually of Roland
Lansdell, as she had thought of Eugene Aram, and Lara, and Ernest
Maltravers--blue-eyed Ernest Maltravers. The blue-eyed heroes were out
of fashion now, for was not _he_ dark of aspect?
She was very wicked, she was very foolish, very childish. All her life
long she had played with her heroines and heroes, as other children play
with their dolls. Now Edith Dombey was the favourite, and now dark-eyed
Zuleika, kneeling for ever at Selim's feet, with an unheeded flower in
her hand. Left quite to herself through all her idle girlhood, this
foolish child had fed upon three volume novels and sentimental poetry:
and now that she was married and invested with the solemn duties of a
wife, she could not throw off the sweet romantic bondage all at once,
and take to pies and puddings.
So she made no endeavour to banish Mr. Lansdell's image from her mind.
If she had recognized the need of such an effort, she would have made
it, perhaps. But she thought that he would go away, and her life would
drop back to its dead level, and would be "all the same as if he had not
been."
But Mr. Lansdell did not leave Mordred just yet. Only a week after the
never-to-be-forgotten day at the Priory, he came again to Thurston's
Crag, and found Isabel sitting under the oak with her books in her lap.
She started up as he approached her, looking rather frightened, and with
her face flushed and her eyelids drooping. She had not expected him.
Demi-gods do not often drop out of the clouds. It is only once in a way
that Castor and Pollux are seen fighting in a mortal fray. Mrs. Gilbert
sat down again, blushing and trembling; but, oh, so happy, so foolishly,
unutterably happy; and Roland Lansdell seated himself by her side and
began to talk to her.
He did not make the slightest allusion to that unfortunate swoon which
had spoiled the climax of his story. That one subject, which of all
others would have been most embarrassing to the Doctor's Wife, was
scrupulously avoided by Mr. Lansdell. He talked of all manner of things.
He had been a _flâneur_ pure and simple for the last ten years, and was
a consummate master of the art of conversation; so he talked to this
ignorant girl of books, and pictures, and foreign cities, and wonderful
people, living and dead, of whom she had never heard before. He seemed
to know everything, Mrs Gilbert thought. She felt as if she was before
the wonderful gates of a new fairy-land, and Mr. Lansdell had the keys,
and could open them for her at his will, and could lead her through the
dim mysterious pathways into the beautiful region beyond.
Mr. Lansdell asked his companion a good many questions about her life at
Graybridge, and the books she read. He found that her life was a very
idle one, and that she was perpetually reading the same books,--the dear
dilapidated volumes of popular novels that were to be had at every
circulating library. Poor little childish creature, who could wonder at
her foolish sentimentality? Out of pure philanthropy Roland offered to
lend her any of the books in his library.
"If you can manage to stroll this way to-morrow morning, I'll bring you
the 'Life of Robespierre,' and Carlyle's 'French Revolution.' I don't
suppose you'll like Carlyle at first; but he's wonderful when you get
accustomed to his style--like a monster brass-band, you know, that stuns
you at first with its crashing thunder, until, little by little, you
discover the wonderful harmony, and appreciate the beauty of the
instrumentation. Shall I bring you Lamartine's 'Girondists' as well?
That will make a great pile of books, but you need not read them
laboriously; you can pick out the pages you like here and there, and we
can talk about them afterwards."
The French Revolution was one of Isabel's pet oases in the history of
the universe. A wonderful period, in which a quiet country-bred young
woman had only to make her way up to Paris and assassinate a tyrant,
and, lo, she became "a feature" throughout all time. Mr. Lansdell had
discovered this special fancy in his talk with the Doctor's Wife, and he
was pleased to let in the light of positive knowledge on her vague ideas
of the chiefs of the Mountain and the martyrs of the Gironde. Was it not
an act of pure philanthropy to clear some of the sentimental mistiness
out of that pretty little head? Was it not a good work rather than a
harmful one to come now and then to this shadowy resting-place under the
oak, and while away an hour or so with this poor little half-educated
damsel, who had so much need of some sounder instruction than she had
been able to glean, unaided, out of novels and volumes of poetry?
There was no harm in these morning rambles, these meetings, which arose
out of the purest chance. There was no harm whatever: especially as Mr.
Lansdell meant to turn his back upon Midlandshire directly the
partridge-shooting was over.
He told Isabel, indirectly, of this intended departure, presently.
"Yes," he said, "you must ask me for whatever books you would like to
read: and by-and-by, when I have left Mordred----"
He paused for a moment, involuntarily, for he saw that Isabel gave a
little shiver.
"When I leave Mordred, at the end of October, you must go to the Priory,
and choose the books for yourself. My housekeeper is a very good woman,
and she will be pleased to wait upon you."
So Mrs. Gilbert began quite a new course of reading, and eagerly
devoured the books which Mr. Lansdell brought her; and wrote long
extracts from them, and made profile sketches of the heroes, all looking
from right to left, and all bearing a strong family resemblance to the
master of Mordred Priory. The education of the Doctor's Wife took a
grand stride by this means. She sat for hours together reading in the
little parlour at Graybridge; and George, whose life was a very busy
one, grew to consider her only in her normal state with a book in her
hand, and was in nowise offended when she ate her supper with an open
volume by the side of her plate, or responded vaguely to his simple
talk. Mr. Gilbert was quite satisfied. He had never sought for more than
this: a pretty little wife to smile upon him when he came home, to brush
his hat for him now and then in the passage after breakfast, before he
went out for his day's work, and to walk to church twice every Sunday
hanging upon his arm. If any one had ever said that such a marriage as
this in any way fell short of perfect and entire union, Mr. Gilbert
would have smiled upon that person as on a harmless madman.
Mr. Lansdell met the Doctor's Wife very often: sometimes on the bridge
beside the water-mill; sometimes in the meadow-land which surged in
emerald billows all about Graybridge and Mordred and Warncliffe. He met
her very often. It was no new thing for Isabel to ramble here and there
in that lovely rustic paradise: but it was quite a new thing for Mr.
Lansdell to take such a fancy for pedestrian exercise. The freak could
not last long, though: the feast of St. Partridge the Martyr was close
at hand, and then Mr. Lansdell would have something better to do than to
dawdle away his time in country lanes and meadows, talking to the
Doctor's Wife.
Upon the very eve of that welcome morning which was to set all the guns
in Midlandshire popping at those innocent red-breasted victims, George
Gilbert received a letter from his old friend and comrade, Mr. Sigismund
Smith, who wrote in very high spirits, and with a great many blots.
"I'm coming down to stop a few days with you, dear old boy," he wrote,
"to get the London smoke blown out of my hyacinthines, and to go abroad
in the meadows to see the young lambs--are there any young lambs in
September, by the bye? I want to see what sort of a matron you have made
of Miss Isabel Sleaford. Do you remember that day in the garden when you
first saw her? A palpable case of spoons there and then! K-k-c-k-k! as
Mr. Buckstone remarks when he digs his knuckles into the walking
gentleman's ribs. Does she make puddings, and sew on buttons, and fill
up the holes in your stockings with wonderful trellis-work? She never
would do that sort of thing at Camberwell. I shall give you a week, and
I shall spend another week in the bosom of my family; and I shall bring
a gun, because it looks well in the railway carriage, you know,
especially if it doesn't go off, which I suppose it won't, if it isn't
loaded; though, to my mind, there's always something suspicious about
the look of fire-arms, and I should never be surprised to see them
explode by spontaneous combustion, or something of that kind. I suppose
you've heard of my new three-volume novel--a legitimate three-volume
romance, with all the interest concentrated upon one body,--'The Mystery
of Mowbray Manor,'--pleasant alliteration of M's, eh?--which is taking
the town by storm; that's to say, Camden Town, where I partial board,
and have some opportunity of pushing the book myself by going into all
the circulating libraries I pass, and putting my name down for an early
perusal of the first copy. Of course I never go for the book; but if I
am the means of making any one simple-minded librarian take a copy of
'The M. of M. M.' more than he wants, I feel I have not laboured in
vain."
Mr. Smith arrived at Warncliffe by an early train next morning, and came
on to Graybridge in an omnibus, which was quite spiky with guns. He was
in very high spirits, and talked incessantly to Isabel, who had stayed
at home to receive him; who had stayed at home when there was just a
faint chance that Mr. Lansdell might take his morning walk in the
direction of Lord Thurston's Crag,--only a faint chance, for was it not
the 1st of September; and might not he prefer the slaughter of
partridges to those lazy loiterings under the big oak?
Mrs. Gilbert gave her old friend a very cordial welcome. She was fond of
him, as she might have been of some big brother less objectionable than
the ordinary run of big brothers. He had never seen Mr. Sleaford's
daughter looking so bright and beautiful. A new element had been
introduced into her life. She was happy, unutterably happy, on the
mystical threshold of a new existence. She did not want to be Edith
Dombey any longer. Not for all the ruby-velvet gowns and diamond
coronets in the world would she have sacrificed one accidental half-hour
on the bridge under Lord Thurston's oak.
She sat at the little table smiling and talking gaily, while the author
of "The Mystery of Mowbray Manor" ate about half a quartern of dough
made up into puffy Yorkshire cakes, and new-laid eggs and frizzled bacon
in proportion. Mr. Smith deprecated the rampant state of his appetite
by-and-by, and made a kind of apology for his ravages.
"You see, the worst of going into society is _that_," he remarked
vaguely, "they see one eat; and it's apt to tell against one in three
volumes. It's a great pity that fiction is not compatible with a healthy
appetite; but it isn't; and society is so apt to object to one, if one
doesn't come up to its expectations. You've no idea what a lot of people
have invited me out to tea--ladies, you know--since the publication of
'The Mystery of Mowbray Manor.' I used to go at first. But they
generally said to me, 'Lor', Mr. Smith, you're not a bit like what I
fancied you were! I thought you'd be TALL, and DARK, and
HAUGHTY-LOOKING, like Montague Manderville in 'The Mystery of ---- ',
&c, &c.; and that sort of thing is apt to make a man feel himself an
impostor. And if a writer of fiction can't drink hot tea without
colouring up as if he had just pocketed a silver spoon, and it was his
guilty conscience, why, my idea is, he'd better stay at home. I don't
think any man was ever as good or as bad as his books," continued
Sigismund, reflectively, scraping up a spoonful of that liquid grease
which Mrs. Jeffson tersely entitled "dip." "There's a kind of righteous
indignation, and a frantic desire to do something splendid for his
fellow-creatures, like vaccinating them all over again, or founding a
hospital for everybody, which a man feels when he's writing--especially
late at night, when he's been keeping himself awake--with bitter
ale--that seems to ooze away somehow when his copy has gone to the
printers. And it's pretty much the same with one's scorn and hate and
cynicism. Nobody ever quite comes up to his books. Even Byron, but for
turning down his collars, and walking lame, and dining on biscuits and
soda-water, might have been a social failure. I think there's a good
deal of Horace Walpole's Inspired Idiocy in this world. The morning sun
shines, and the statue is musical; but all the day there is silence; and
at night--in society, I suppose--the sounds are lugubrious. How I do
talk, Izzie, and _you_ don't say anything! But I needn't ask if you're
happy. I never saw you looking so pretty."
Isabel blushed. Was she pretty? Oh, she wanted so much to be pretty!
"And I think George may congratulate himself upon having secured the
dearest little wife in all Midlandshire."
Mrs. Gilbert blushed a deeper red; but the happy smile died away on her
lips. Something, a very vague something as yet, was lurking in what Mr.
Raymond would have called her "inner consciousness;" and she thought,
perhaps, George had not such very great reason for self-gratulation.
"I always do as he tells me,"' she said naïvely; "and he's kinder than
mamma used to be, and doesn't mind my reading at meals. You know how ma
used to go on about it. And I mend his socks--sometimes." She drew open
a drawer, where there were some little bundles of grey woollen stuff,
and balls of worsted with big needles stuck across them. "And, oh,
Sigismund," she exclaimed, rather inconsecutively, "we've been to
Mordred--to Mordred Priory--to a luncheon; quite a grand
luncheon--pine-apple and ices, and nearly half-a-dozen different kinds
of glasses for each person."
She could talk to Sigismund about Mordred and the master of Mordred. He
was not like George, and he would sympathize with her enthusiasm about
that earthly paradise.
"Do you know Mordred?" she asked. She felt a kind of pleasure in calling
the mansion "Mordred," all short, as _he_ called it.
"I know the village of Mordred well enough," Mr. Smith answered, "and I
_ought_ to know the Priory precious well. The last Mr. Lansdell gave my
father a good deal of business; and when Roland Lansdell was being
coached-up in the Classics by a private tutor, I used to go up to the
Priory and read with him. The governor was very glad to get such a
chance for me; but I can't say I intensely appreciated the advantage
myself, on hot summer afternoons, when there was cricketing on
Warncliffe meads."
"You knew him--you knew Mr. Roland Lansdell when he was a boy?" said
Isabel, with a little gasp.
"I certainly did, my dear Izzie; but I don't think there's anything
wonderful in that. You couldn't open your eyes much wider if I'd said
I'd known Eugene Aram when he was a boy. I remember Roland Lansdell,"
continued Mr. Smith, slapping his breakfast-napkin across his dusty
boots, "and a very jolly young fellow he was; a regular young swell,
with a chimney-pot hat and dandy boots, and a gold hunter in his
waistcoat-pocket, and no end of pencil-cases, and cricket-bats, and
drawing-portfolios, and single-sticks, and fishing-tackle. He taught me
fencing," added Sigismund, throwing himself suddenly into a position
that covered one entire side of the little parlour, and making a
postman's knock upon the carpet with the sole of his foot.
"Come, Mrs. Gilbert," he said, presently, "put on your bonnet, and come
out for a walk. I suppose there's no chance of our seeing George till
dinner-time."
Isabel was pleased to go out. All the world seemed astir upon this
bright September morning; and out of doors there was always just a
chance of meeting _him_. She put on her hat, the broad-leaved straw that
cast such soft shadows upon her face, and she took up the big green
parasol, and was ready to accompany her old friend in a minute.
"I don't want the greetings in the market-place," Mr. Smith said, as
they went out into the lane, where it was always very dusty in dry
weather, and very muddy when there was rain. "I know almost everybody in
Graybridge; and there'll be a round of stereotyped questions and answers
to go through as to how I'm getting on 'oop in London.' I can't tell
those people that I earn my bread by writing 'The Demon of the Galleys,'
or 'The Mystery of Mowbray Manor.' Take me for a country walk, Izzie; a
regular rustic ramble."
Mrs. Gilbert blushed. That habit of blushing when she spoke or was
spoken to had grown upon her lately. Then, after a little pause, she
said, shyly:
"Thurston's Crag is a pretty place; shall we go there?"
"Suppose we do. That's quite a brilliant thought of yours, Izzie.
Thurston's Crag is a pretty place, a nice, drowsy, lazy old place, where
one always goes to sleep, and wishes one had bottled beer. It reminds
one of bottled beer, you know, the waterfall,--bottled beer in a rampant
state of effervescence."
Isabel's face was all lighted up with smiles.
"I am so glad you have come to see us, Sigismund," she said.
She was very glad. She might go to Thurston's Crag now as often as she
could beguile Sigismund thitherward, and that haunting sense of
something wrong would no longer perplex her in the midst of her
unutterable joy. It was unutterable! She had tried to write poetry about
it, and had failed dismally, though her heart was making poetry all day
long, as wildly, vaguely beautiful as Solomon's Song. She had tried to
set her joy to music; but there were no notes on the harpsichord that
could express such wondrous melody; though there was indeed one little
simple theme, an old-fashioned air, arranged as a waltz, "'Twere vain to
tell thee all I feel," which Isabel would play slowly, again and again,
for an hour together, dragging the melody out in lingering legato notes,
and listening to its talk about Roland Lansdell.
But all this was very wicked, of course. To-day she could go to
Thurston's Crag with a serene front, an unburdened conscience. What
could be more intensely proper than this country walk with her mother's
late partial boarder?
They turned into the meadows presently, and as they drew nearer and
nearer to the grassy hollow under the cliff, where the miller's cottage
and the waterfall were nestled together like jewels in a casket of
emerald velvet, the ground seemed to grow unsubstantial under her feet,
as if Thurston's Crag had been a phantasmal region suspended in mid air.
Would he be there? Her heart was perpetually beating out the four
syllables of that simple sentence: Would he be there? It was the 1st of
September, and he would be away shooting partridges, perhaps. Oh, was
there even the remotest chance that he would be there?
Sigismund handed her across the stile in the last meadow, and then there
was only a little bit of smooth verdure between them and the waterfall;
but the overhanging branches of the trees intervened, and Isabel could
not see yet whether there was any one on the bridge.
But presently the narrow winding path brought them to a break in the
foliage. Isabel's heart gave a tremendous bound, and then the colour,
which had come and gone so often on her face, faded away altogether. He
was there: leaning with his back against the big knotted trunk of the
oak, and making a picture of himself, with one arm above his head,
plucking the oak-leaves and dropping them into the water. He looked down
at the glancing water and the hurrying leaves with a moody dissatisfied
scowl. Had he been anything less than a hero, one might have thought
that he looked sulky.
But when the light footsteps came rustling through the long grass,
accompanied by the faint fluttering of a woman's garments, his face
brightened as suddenly as if the dense foliage above his head had been
swept away by a Titan's axe, and all the sunshine let in upon him. That
very expressive face darkened a little when Mr. Lansdell saw Sigismund
behind the Doctor's Wife; but the cloud was transient. The jealous
delusions of a monomaniac could scarcely have transformed Mr. Smith into
a Cassio. Desdemona might have pleaded for him all day long, and might
have supplied him with any number of pocket-handkerchiefs hemmed and
marked by her own fair hands, without causing the Moor a single
apprehensive pang.
Mr. Lansdell did not recognize the youthful acquaintance who had
stumbled a little way in the thorny path of knowledge by his side; but
he saw that Sigismund was a harmless creature; and after he had bared
his handsome head before Isabel, he gave Mr. Smith a friendly little nod
of general application.
"I have let the keepers shoot the first of the partridges," he said,
dropping his voice almost to a whisper as he bent over Mrs. Gilbert,
"and I have been here ever since ten o'clock."
It was past one now. He had been there three hours, Isabel thought,
waiting for her.
Yes, it had gone so far as this already. But he was to go away at the
end of October. He was to go away, it would all be over, and the world
come to an end by the 1st of November.
There was a little pile of books upon the seat under the tree. Mr.
Lansdell pushed them off the bench, and tumbled them ignominiously among
the long grass and weeds beneath it. Isabel saw them fall; and uttered a
little exclamation of surprise.
"You have brought me--" she began; but to her astonishment Roland checked
her with a frown, and began to talk about the waterfall, and the trout
that were to be caught in the season lower down in the stream. Mr.
Lansdell was more worldly wise than the Doctor's Wife, and he knew that
the books brought there for her might seem slightly suggestive of an
appointment. There had been no appointment, of course; but there was
always a chance of finding Isabel under Lord Thurston's oak. Had she not
gone there constantly, long ago, when Mr. Lansdell was lounging in
Grecian Islands, and eating ices under, the colonnades of Venice? and
was it strange that she should go there now?
I should become very wearisome, were I to transcribe all that was said
that morning. It was a very happy morning,--a long, idle sunshiny pause
in the business of life. Roland recognized an old acquaintance in
Sigismund Smith presently, and the two young men talked gaily of those
juvenile days at Mordred. They talked pleasantly of all manner of
things. Mr. Lansdell must have been quite ardently attached to Sigismund
in those early days, if one might judge of the past by the present; for
he greeted his old acquaintance with absolute effusion, and sketched out
quite a little royal progress of rustic enjoyment for the week Sigismund
was to stay at Graybridge.
"We'll have a picnic," he said: "you remember we talked about a picnic,
Mrs. Gilbert. We'll have a picnic at Waverly Castle; there isn't a more
delightfully inconvenient place for a picnic in all Midlandshire. One
can dine on the top of the western tower, in actual danger of one's
life. You can write to your uncle Raymond, Smith, and ask him to join
us, with the two nieces, who are really most amiable children; so
estimably unintellectual, and no more in the way than a little extra
furniture: you mayn't want it; but if you've space enough for it in your
rooms, it doesn't in the least inconvenience you. This is Thursday;
shall we say Saturday for my picnic? I mean it to be my picnic, you
know; a bachelor's picnic, with all the most obviously necessary items
forgotten, I dare say. I think the salad-dressing and the
champagne-nippers are the legitimate things to forget, are they not? Do
you think Saturday will suit you and the Doctor, Mrs. Gilbert? I should
like it to be Saturday, because you must all dine with me at Mordred on
Sunday, in order that we may drink success and a dozen editions to
the--what's the name of your novel, Smith? Shall it be Saturday, Mrs.
Gilbert?"
Isabel only answered by deepening blushes and a confused murmur of
undistinguishable syllables. But her face lighted up with a look of
rapture that was wont to illuminate it now and then, and which, Mr.
Lansdell thought was the most beautiful expression of the human
countenance that he had ever seen, out of a picture or in one. Sigismund
answered for the Doctor's Wife. Yes, he was sure Saturday would do
capitally. He would settle it all with George, and he would answer for
his uncle Raymond and the orphans; and he would answer for the weather
even, for the matter of that. He further accepted the invitation to dine
at Mordred on Sunday, for himself and his host and hostess.
"You know you can, Izzie," he said, in answer to Mrs. Gilbert's
deprecating murmur; "it's mere nonsense talking about prior engagements
in a place like Graybridge, where nobody ever does go out to dinner, and
a tea-party on a Sunday is looked upon as wickedness. Lansdell always
was a jolly good fellow, and I'm not a bit surprised to find that he's a
jolly good fellow still; because if you train up a twig in the way it's
inclined, the tree will not depart from it, as the philosopher has
observed. I want to see Mordred again, most particularly; for, to tell
you the truth, Lansdell," said Mr. Smith, with a gush of candour, "I was
thinking of taking the Priory for the scene of my next novel. There's a
mossy kind of gloom about the eastern side of the house and the old
square garden, that I think would take with the general public; and with
regard to the cellarage," cried Sigismund, kindling with sudden
enthusiasm, "I've been through it with a lantern, and I'm sure there's
accommodation for a perfect regiment of bodies, which would be a
consideration if I was going to do the story in penny numbers; for in
penny numbers one body always leads on to another, and you never know,
when you begin, how far you may be obliged to go. However, my present
idea is three volumes. What do you think now, Lansdell, of the eastern
side of the Priory; deepening the gloom, you know, and letting the
gardens all run to seed, with rank grass and a blasted cedar or so, and
introducing rats behind the panelling, and a general rottenness, and
perhaps a ghostly footstep in the corridor, or a periodical rustling
behind the tapestry? What do you say, now, to Mordred, taken in
connection with twin brothers hating each other from infancy, and both
in love with the same woman, and one of them--the darkest twin, with a
scar on his forehead--walling up the young female in a deserted room,
while the more amiable twin without a scar devotes his life to searching
for her in foreign climes, accompanied by a detective officer and a
bloodhound? It's only a rough idea at present," concluded Mr. Smith,
modestly; "but I shall work it out in railway trains and pedestrian
exercise. There's nothing like railway travelling or pedestrian exercise
for working out an idea of that kind."
Mr. Lansdell declared that his house and grounds were entirely at the
service of his young friend; and it was settled that the picnic should
take place on Saturday, and the dinner-party on Sunday; and George
Gilbert's acquiescence in the two arrangements was guaranteed by his
friend Sigismund. And then the conversation wandered away into more
fanciful regions; and Roland and Mr. Smith talked of men and books,
while Isabel listened, only chiming in now and then with little
sentimental remarks, to which the master of Mordred Priory listened as
intently as if the speaker had been a Madame de Staël. She may not have
said anything very wonderful; but those were wonderful blushes that came
and went upon her pale face as she spoke, fluttering and fitful as the
shadow of a butterfly's wing hovering above a white rose; and the golden
light in her eyes was more wonderful than anything out of a fairy tale.
But he always listened to her, and he always looked at her from a
certain position which he had elected for himself in relation to her.
She was a beautiful child; and he, a man of the world, very much tired
and worn out by the ordinary men and women of the world, was half
amused, half interested, by her simplicity and sentimentality. He did no
wrong, therefore, by cultivating her acquaintance when accident threw
her, as had happened so often lately, in his way. There was no harm, so
long as he held firmly to the position he had chosen for himself; so
long as he contemplated this young gushing creature from across all the
width of his own wasted youth and useless days; so long as he looked at
her as a bright unapproachable being, as much divided from him by the
difference in their natures, as by the fact that she was the lawful wife
of Mr. George Gilbert of Graybridge-on-the-Wayverne.
Mr. Lansdell tried his uttermost to hold firmly to this self-elected
position with regard to Isabel. He was always alluding to his own age;
an age not to be computed, as he explained to Mrs. Gilbert, by the
actual number of years in which he had inhabited this lower world, but
to be calculated rather by the waste of those wearisome years, and the
general decadence that had fallen upon him thereby.
"I suppose, according to the calendar, I am only your senior by a
decade," he said to Izzie one day; "but when I hear you talk about your
books and your heroes, I feel as if I had lived a century."
He took the trouble to make little speeches of this kind very often, for
Mrs. Gilbert's edification; and there were times when the Doctor's Wife
was puzzled, and even wounded, by his talk and his manner, which were
both subject to abrupt transitions, that were perplexing to a simple
person. Mr. Lansdell was capricious and fitful in his moods, and would
break off in the middle of some delicious little bit of sentiment,
worthy of Ernest Maltravers or Eugene Aram himself, with a sneering
remark about the absurdity of the style of conversation into which he
had been betrayed; and would sit moodily pulling his favourite
retriever's long ears for ten minutes or so, and then get up and wish
Isabel an abrupt good morning. Mrs. Gilbert took these changes of manner
very deeply to heart. It was her fault, no doubt; she had said something
silly; or affected, perhaps. Had not her brother Horace been apt to jeer
at her as a mass of affectation, because she preferred Byron to "Bell's
Life," and was more interested in Edith Dombey than in the favourite for
the Oaks? She had said something that had sounded affected, though
uttered in all simplicity of heart; and Mr. Lansdell had been disgusted
by her talk. Contempt from _him_--she always thought of him in
italics--was very bitter! She would never, never go to Thurston's Crag
again. But then, after one of those abruptly-unpleasant "good mornings,"
Mr. Lansdell was very apt to call at Graybridge. He wanted Mr. Gilbert
to go and see one of the men on the home-farm, who seemed in a very bad
way, poor fellow, and ought not to be allowed to go on any longer
without medical advice. Mr. Lansdell was very fond of looking up cases
for the Graybridge surgeon. How good he was! Isabel thought; he in whom
goodness was in a manner a supererogatory attribute; since heroes who
were dark, and pensive, and handsome, were not called upon to be
otherwise virtuous. How good he was! he who was as scornfully
depreciative of his own merits as if the bones of another Mr. Clarke had
been bleaching in some distant cave in imperishable evidence of his
guilt. How good he was! and he had not been offended or disgusted with
her when he left her so suddenly; for to-day he was kinder to her than
ever, and lingered for nearly an hour in the unshaded parlour, in the
hope that the surgeon would come in.
But when Mr. Lansdell walked slowly homeward after such a visit as this,
there was generally a dissatisfied look upon his face, which was
altogether inconsistent with the pleasure he had appeared to take in his
wasted hour at Graybridge. He was inconsistent. It was in his nature, as
a hero, to be so, no doubt. There were times when he forgot all about
that yawning chasm of years which was supposed to divide him from any
possibility of sympathy with Isabel Gilbert; there were times when he
forgot himself so far as to be very young and happy in his loitering
visits at Graybridge, playing idle scraps of extempore melody on the
wizen old harpsichord, sketching little bunches of foliage and frail
Italian temples, and pretty girlish faces with big black eyes, not
altogether unlike Isabel's, or strolling out into the flat old-fashioned
garden, where Mr. Jeffson lolled on his spade, and made a rustic figure
of himself, between a middle distance of brown earth and a foreground of
cabbage-plants. I am bound to say that Mr. Jeffson, who was generally
courtesy itself to every living creature, from the pigs to whom he
carried savoury messes of skim-milk and specky potatoes, to the rector
of Graybridge, who gave him "good evening" sometimes as he reposed
himself in the cool twilight, upon the wooden gate leading into George
Gilbert's stable-yard,--I am bound to say that Mr. Jeffson was
altogether wanting in politeness to Roland Lansdell, and was apt to
follow the young man with black and evil looks as he strolled by Izzie's
side along the narrow walks, or stooped now and then to extricate her
muslin dress from the thorny branches of a gooseberry-bush.
Once, and once only, did Isabel Gilbert venture to remonstrate with her
husband's retainer on the subject of his surly manner to the master of
Mordred Priory. Her remonstrance was a very faint one, and she was
stooping over a rose-bush while she talked, and was very busy plucking
off the withered leaves, and now and then leaves that were not withered.
"I am afraid you don't like Mr. Lansdell, Jeff," she said. She had been
very much attached to the gardener, and very confidential to him, before
Roland's advent, and had done a little amateur gardening under his
instructions, and had told him all about Eugene Aram and the murder of
Mr. Clarke "You seemed quite cross to him this morning when he called to
see George, and to inquire about the man that had the rheumatic fever;
I'm afraid you don't like him."
She bent her face very low over the rose-bush; so low that her hair,
which, though much tidier than of old, was never quite as neatly or
compactly adjusted as it might have been, fell forward like a veil, and
entangled itself among the spiky branches. "Oh yes, Mrs. George; I like
him well enough. There's not a young gentleman that I ever set eyes on
as I think nobler to look at, or pleasanter to talk to, than Mr.
Lansdell, or more free and open-like in his manner to poor folk. But,
like a many other good things, Mrs. George, Mr. Lansdell's only good, to
my mind, when he's in his place; and I tell you, frank and candid, as I
think he's never more out of his place than when he's hanging about your
house, or idling away his time in this garden. It isn't for me, Mrs.
George, to say who should come here, and who shouldn't; but there was a
kind of relationship between me and my master's dead mother. I can see
her now, poor young thing, with her bright fair face, and her fair hair
blowing across it, as she used to come towards me along the very pathway
on which you're standing now, Mrs. George; and all that time comes back
to me as if it was yesterday. I never knew any one lead a better or a
purer life. I stood beside her deathbed, and I never saw a happier
death, nor one that seemed to bring it closer home to a man's mind that
there was something happier and better still to come afterwards. But
there was never no Mr. Roland Lansdell in those days, Mrs. George,
scribbling heads with no bodies to 'em, and trees without any stumps, on
scraps of paper, or playing tunes, or otherwise dawdling like, while my
master was out o' doors. And I remember, as almost the last words that
sweet young creature says, was something about having done her duty to
her dear husband, and never having known one thought as she could wish
to keep hid from him or Heaven."
Mrs. Gilbert dropped down on her knees before the rose-bush, with her
face still shrouded by her hair, and her hands still busy among the
leaves. When she looked up, which was not until after a lapse of some
minutes, Mr. Jeffson was ever so far off, digging potatoes, with his
back turned towards her. There had been nothing unkind in his manner of
speaking to her; indeed, there had even been a special kindness and
tenderness in his tones, a sorrowful gentleness, that went home to her
heart.
She thought of her husband's dead mother a good deal that night, in a
reverential spirit, but with a touch of envy also. Was not the first
Mrs. Gilbert specially happy to have died young? was it not an enormous
privilege so to die, and to be renowned ever afterwards as having done
something meritorious, when, for the matter of that, other people would
be very happy to die young, if they could? Isabel thought of this with
some sense of injury. Long ago, when her brothers had been rude to her,
and her step-mother had upbraided her on the subject of a constitutional
unwillingness to fetch butter, and "back" teaspoons, she had wished to
die young, leaving a legacy of perpetual remorse to those unfeeling
relatives. But the gods had never cared anything about her. She had kept
on wet boots sometimes after "backing" spoons in bad weather, in the
fond hope that she might thereby fall into a decline. She had pictured
herself in the little bedroom at Camberwell, fading by inches, with
becoming hectic spots on her cheeks, and imploring her step-mother to
call her early; which desire would have been the converse of the popular
idea of the ruling passion, inasmuch as in her normal state of health
Miss Sleaford was wont to be late of a morning, and remonstrate
drowsily, with the voice of the sluggard, when roughly roused from some
foolish dream, in which she wore a ruby-velvet gown that _wouldn't_ keep
hooked, and was beloved by a duke who was always inconsistently changing
into the young man at the butter-shop.
All that evening Isabel pondered upon the simple history of her
husband's mother, and wished that she could be very, very good, like
her, and die early, with holy words upon her lips. But in the midst of
such thoughts as these, she found herself wondering whether the hands of
Mr. Gilbert the elder were red and knobby like those of his son, whether
he employed the same bootmaker, and entertained an equal predilection
for spring-onions and Cheshire cheese. And from the picture of her
deathbed Isabel tried in vain to blot away a figure that had no right to
be there,--the figure of some one who would be fetched post-haste, at
the last moment, to hear her dying words, and to see her die.