THE SECOND WARNING.
Mr. Roland Lansdell did not invite Lady Gwendoline or her father to that
bachelor picnic which he was to give at Waverly Castle. He had a kind of
instinctive knowledge that Lord Ruysdale's daughter would not relish
that sylvan entertainment.
"She'd object to poor Smith. I dare say," Roland said to himself, "with
his sporting-cut clothes, and his slang phrases, and his perpetual talk
about three-volume novels and penny numbers. No, I don't think it would
do to invite Gwendoline; she'd be sure to object to Smith."
Mr. Lansdell said this, or thought this, a good many times upon the day
before the picnic; but it may be that there was a lurking idea in his
mind that Lady Gwendoline might object to the presence of some one other
than Mr. Smith in the little assembly that had been planned under Lord
Thurston's oak. Perhaps Roland Lansdell,--who hated hypocrisy as men who
are by no means sinless are yet apt to hate the base and crawling vices
of mankind,--had become a hypocrite all at once, and wanted to deceive
himself; or it may be that the weak slope of his handsome chin, and the
want of breadth in a certain region of his skull, were the outward and
visible signs of such a weak and vacillating nature, that what was true
with regard to him one minute was false the next; so that out of this
perpetual changefulness of thought and purpose there grew a confusion in
the young man's mind, like the murmur of many streamlets rushing into
one broad river, along whose tide the feeble swimmer was drifted to the
very sea he wanted so much to avoid.
"The picnic will be a pleasant thing for young Smith," Mr. Lansdell
thought; "and it'll please the children to make themselves bilious
amongst ruins; and that dear good Raymond always enjoys himself with
young and happy people. I cannot see that the picnic can be anything but
pleasant; and for the matter of that, I've a good mind to send the
baskets early by Stephens, who could make himself useful all day, and
not go at all myself. I could run up to town under pretence of
particular business, and amuse myself somehow for a day or two. Or, for
that matter, I might go over to Baden or Hombourg, and finish the autumn
there. Heaven knows I don't want to do any harm."
But, in spite of all this uncertainty and vacillation of mind, Mr.
Lansdell took a great deal of interest in the preparations for the
picnic. He did not trouble himself about the magnificent game-pie which
was made for the occasion, the crust of which was as highly glazed as a
piece of modern Wedgwood. He did not concern himself about the tender
young fowls, nestling in groves of parsley; nor the tongue, floridly
decorated with vegetable productions chiselled into the shapes of
impossible flowers; nor the York ham, also in a high state of polish,
like fine Spanish mahogany, and encircled about the knuckle by pure
white fringes of cut paper.
The comestibles to which Mr. Lansdell directed his attention were of a
more delicate and fairy-like description, such as women and children are
apt to take delight in. There must be jellies and creams, Mr. Lansdell
said, whatever difficulty there might be in the conveyance of such
compositions. There must be fruit; he attended himself to the cutting of
hothouse grapes and peaches, the noblest pine-apple in the long range of
forcing-houses, and picturesque pears with leaves still clinging to the
stalk. He ordered bouquets to be cut, one a very pyramid of choice
flowers, chiefly white and innocent-looking, and he took care to select
richly-scented blossoms, and he touched the big nosegay caressingly with
his slim white fingers, and looked at it with a tender smile on his dark
face, as if the flowers had a language for him,--and so they had; but it
was by no means that stereotyped dictionary of substantives and
adjectives popularly called the language of flowers.
It was nothing new for him to choose a bouquet. Had he not dispensed a
small fortune in the Rue de la Paix and in the Faubourg St. Honoré, in
exchange for big bunches of roses and myosotis, and Cape-jasmine and
waxy camellias; which he saw afterwards lying on the velvet cushion of
an opera-box, or withering in the warm atmosphere of a boudoir? He was
not a good man,--he had not led a good life. Pretty women had called him
"Enfant!" in the dim mysterious shades of lamplit conservatories, upon
the curtain-shrouded thresholds of moonlit balconies. Arch soubrettes in
little Parisian theatres, bewitching Marthons and Margots and
Jeannettons, with brooms in their hands and diamonds in their ears, had
smiled at him, and acted at him, and sung at him, as he lounged in the
dusky recesses of a cavernous box. He had not led a good life. He was
not a good man. But he was a man who had never sinned with impunity.
With him remorse always went hand-in-hand with wrong-doing.
In all his life, I doubt if there was any period in which Mr. Lansdell
had ever so honestly and truly wished to do aright as he did just now.
His mind seemed to have undergone a kind of purification in the still
atmosphere of those fair Midlandshire glades and meads. There was even a
purifying influence in the society of such a woman as Isabel Gilbert, so
different from all the other women he had known, so deficient in the
merest rudiments of worldly wisdom.
Mr. Lansdell did not go to London. When the ponderous old fly from
Graybridge drove up a narrow winding lane and emerged upon the green
rising ground below the gates of Waverly Castle, Roland was standing
under the shadow of the walls, with a big bunch of hothouse flowers in
his hand. He was in very high spirits; for to-day he had cast care to
the winds. Why should he not enjoy this innocent pleasure of a rustic
ramble with simple country-bred people and children? He laid some little
stress upon the presence of the orphans. Yes, he would enjoy himself for
to-day; and then to-morrow--ah! by the bye, to-morrow Mr. and Mrs.
Gilbert and Sigismund Smith were to dine with him. After to-morrow it
would be all over, and he would be off to the Continent again, to begin
the old wearisome rounds once more; To eat the same dinners at the same
restaurants; the same little suppers after the opera, in stuffy entresol
chambers, all crimson velvet, and gaslight, and glass, and gilding; to
go to the same balls in the same gorgeous saloons, and to see the same
beautiful faces shining upon him in their monotonous splendour.
"I might have turned country gentleman, and have been good for something
in this world," thought Roland, "if----"
Mr. Lansdell was not alone. Charles Raymond and the orphans had arrived;
and they all came forward together to welcome Isabel and her companions.
Mr. Raymond had always been very kind to his nieces' governess, but he
seemed especially kind to her to-day. He interposed himself between
Roland and the door of the fly, and assisted Isabel to alight. He
slipped her hand under his arm with a pleasant friendliness of manner,
and looked with a triumphant smile at the rest of the gentlemen.
"I mean to appropriate Mrs. Gilbert for the whole of this day," he said,
cheerily; "and I shall give her a full account of Waverly, looked upon
from an archæological, historical, and legendary point of view. Never
mind your flowers now, Roland; it's a very charming bouquet, but you
don't suppose Mrs. Gilbert is going to carry it about all day? Take it
into the lodge yonder, and ask them to put it in water; and in the
evening, if you're very good, Mrs. Gilbert shall take it home to
ornament her parlour at Graybridge."
The gates were opened, and they went in; Isabel arm-in-arm with Mr.
Raymond.
Roland placed himself presently on one side of Isabel; but Mr. Raymond
was so very instructive about John of Gaunt and the Tudors, that all
Mrs. Gilbert's attention was taken up in the effort to understand his
discourse, which was very pleasant and lively, in spite of its
instructive nature. George Gilbert looked at the ruins with the same
awful respect with which he had regarded the pictures at Mordred. He was
tolerably familiar with those empty halls, those roofless chambers, and
open doorways, and ivy-festooned windows; but he always looked at them
with the same reverence, mingled with a vague wonder as to what it was
that people admired in ruins, seeing that they generally made such short
work of inspecting them, and seemed so pleased to get away and take
refreshment. Ruins and copious refreshment ware associated in Mr.
Gilbert's mind; and, indeed, there does seem to be a natural union
between ivied walls and lobster-salad, crumbling turrets and cold
chicken; just as the domes of Greenwich Hospital, the hilly park beyond,
and the rippling water in the foreground, must be for ever and ever
associated with floundered souchy and devilled whitebait. Mr. Sigismund
Smith was delighted with Waverly. He had rambled amongst the ruins often
enough in his boyhood; but to-day he saw everything from a new point of
view, and he groped about in all manner of obscure corners, with a
pencil and pocket-book in his hand, laying the plan of a thrilling
serial, and making himself irrecognizable with dust. His friends found
him on one occasion stretched at full length amongst crisp fallen leaves
in a recess that had once been a fireplace, with a view to ascertain
whether it was long enough to accommodate a body. He climbed fearful
heights, and planned perilous leaps and "hairbreadth 'scapes," deadly
dangers in the way of walks along narrow cornices high up above empty
space; such feats as hold the reader with suspended breath, and make the
continued expenditure of his weekly penny almost a certainty.
The orphans accompanied Mr. Smith, and were delighted with the little
chambers that they found in nooks and corners of the mouldering castle.
How delightful to have chairs and tables and kitchen utensils, and to
live there for ever and ever, and keep house for themselves! They envied
the vulgar children who lived in the square tower by the gate, and saw
ruins every day of their lives.
It was a very pleasant morning altogether. There was a strangely mingled
feeling of satisfaction and annoyance in Roland Lansdell's mind as he
strolled beside Isabel, and listened, or appeared to listen, to Mr.
Raymond's talk. He would like to have had Isabel's little hand lying
lightly on his arm; he would like to have seen those wondering black
eyes lifted to his face; he would like her to have heard the romantic
legends belonging to the ruined walls and roofless banquet-chambers from
him. And yet, perhaps, it was better as it was. He was going away very
soon--immediately, indeed; he was going where that simple pleasure would
be impossible to him, and it was better not to lull himself in soft
delights that were so soon to be taken away from his barren life. Yes,
his barren life. He had come to think of his fate with bitter repining,
and to look upon himself as, somehow or other, cruelly ill-used by
Providence.
But, in spite of Mr. Raymond, he contrived to sit next Isabel at dinner,
which was served by-and-by in a lovely sheltered nook under the walls,
where there was no chance of the salt being blown into the greengage
tart, or the custard spilt over the lobster-salad. Mr. Lansdell had sent
a couple of servants to arrange matters; and the picnic was not a bit
like an ordinary picnic, where things are lost and forgotten, and where
there is generally confusion by reason of everybody's desire to assist
in the preparations. This was altogether a _recherché_ banquet; but
scarcely so pleasant as those more rural feasts, in which there is a
paucity of tumblers, and no forks to speak of. The champagne was iced,
the jellies quivered in the sunlight, everything was in perfect order;
and if Mr. Raymond had not insisted upon sending away the two men, who
wanted to wait at table, with the gloomy solemnity of every-day life, it
would scarcely have been worthy the name of picnic. But with the two
solemn servants out of the way, and with Sigismund, very red and dusty
and noisy, to act as butler, matters were considerably improved.
The sun was low when they left the ruins of the feast for the two solemn
men to clear away. The sun was low, and the moon had risen, so pale as
to be scarcely distinguishable from a faint summer cloud high up in the
clear opal heaven. Mr. Raymond took Isabel up by a winding staircase to
the top of a high turret, beneath which spread green meads and slopes of
verdure, where once had been a lake and pleasaunce. The moon grew
silvery before they reached the top of the turret, where there was room
enough for a dozen people. Roland went with them, of course, and sat on
one of the broad stone battlements looking out at the still night, with
his profile defined as sharply as a cameo against the deepening blue of
the sky. He was very silent, and his silence had a distracting influence
on Isabel, who made vain efforts to understand what Mr. Raymond was
saying to her, and gave vague answers every now and then; so vague that
Charles Raymond left off talking presently, and seemed to fall into as
profound a reverie as that which kept Mr. Lansdell silent.
To Isabel's mind there was a pensive sweetness in that silence, which
was in some way in harmony with the scene and the atmosphere. She was
free to watch Roland's face now that Mr. Raymond had left off talking to
her, and she did watch it; that still profile whose perfect outline grew
more and more distinct against the moonlit sky. If anybody could have
painted his portrait as he sat there, with one idle hand hanging
listless among the ivy-leaves, blanched in the moonlight, what a picture
it would have made! What was he thinking of? Were his thoughts far away
in some foreign city with dark-eyed Clotilde? or the Duchess with the
glittering hair, who had loved him and been false to him long ago, when
he was an alien, and recorded the history of his woes in heart-breaking
verse, in fitful numbers, larded with scraps of French and Latin,
alternately despairing and sarcastic? Isabel solemnly believed in
Clotilde and the glittering Duchess, and was steeped in self-abasement
and humiliation when she compared herself with those vague and splendid
creatures.
Roland spoke at last: if there had been anything common-place or worldly
wise in what he said, there must have been a little revulsion in
Isabel's mind; but his talk was happily attuned to the place and the
hour; incomprehensible and mysterious,--like the deepening night in the
heavens.
"I think there is a point at which a man's life comes to an end," he
said. "I think there is a fitting and legitimate close to every man's
existence, that is as palpable as the falling of a curtain when a play
is done. He goes on living; that is to say, eating and drinking, and
inhaling so many cubic feet of fresh air every day, for half a century
afterwards, perhaps; but that is nothing. Do not the actors live after
the play is done, and the curtain has fallen? Hamlet goes home and eats
his supper, and scolds his wife and snubs his children; but the
exaltation and the passion that created him Prince of Denmark have died
out like the coke ashes of the green-room fire. Surely that after-life
is the penalty, the counter-balance, of brief golden hours of hope and
pleasure. I am glad the Lansdells are not a long-lived race, Raymond;
for I think the play is finished, and the dark curtain has dropped for
me!"
"Humph!" muttered Mr. Raymond; "wasn't there something to that effect in
the 'Alien?' It's very pretty, Roland,--that sort of dismal prettiness
which is so much in fashion nowadays; but don't you think if you were to
get up a little earlier in the morning, and spend a couple of hours
amongst the stubble with your clogs and gun, so as to get an appetite
for your breakfast, you might get over that sort of thing?"
Isabel turned a mutely reproachful gaze upon Mr. Raymond, but Roland
burst out laughing.
"I dare say I talk like a fool," he said; "I feel like one sometimes."
"When are you going abroad again?"
"In a month's time. But why should I go abroad?" asked Mr. Lansdell,
with a dash of fierceness in the sudden change of his tone; "why should
I go? what is there for me to do there better than here? what good am I
there more than I am here?" He asked these questions of the sky as much
as of Mr. Raymond; and the philosopher of Conventford did not feel
himself called upon to answer them. Mr. Lansdell relapsed into the
silence that so puzzled Isabel; and nothing more was said until the
voice of George Gilbert sounded from below, deeply sonorous amongst the
walls and towers, calling to Isabel.
"I must go," she said; "I dare say the fly is ready to take us back.
Goodnight, Mr. Raymond; goodnight, Mr. Lansdell."
She held out her hand, as if doubtful to whom she should first offer it;
Roland had never changed his position until this moment, but he started
up suddenly now, like a man awakened from a dream. "You are going?" he
said; "so soon!"
"So soon! it is very late, I think," Mrs. Gilbert answered; "at least, I
mean we have enjoyed ourselves very much; and the time has passed so
quickly."
She thought it was her duty to say something of this kind to him, as the
giver of the feast; and then she blushed and grew confused, thinking she
had said too much.
"Good night, Mr. Lansdell."
"But I am coming down with you to the gate," said Roland; "do you think
we could let you go down those slippery stairs by yourself, to fall and
break your neck and haunt the tower by moonlight for ever afterwards, a
pale ghost in shadowy muslin drapery? Here's Mr. Gilbert," he added, as
the top of George's hat made itself visible upon the winding staircase;
"but I'm sure I know the turret better than he does, and I shall take
you under my care."
He took her hand as he spoke, and led her down the dangerous winding way
as carefully and tenderly as if she had been a little child. Her hand
did not tremble as it rested in his; but something like a mysterious
winged creature that had long been imprisoned in her breast seemed to
break his bonds all at once, and float away from her towards him. She
thought it was her long-imprisoned soul, perhaps, that so left her to
become a part of his. If that slow downward journey could have lasted
for ever--if she could have gone down, down, down with Roland Lansdell
into some fathomless pit, until at last they came to a luminous cavern
and still moonlit water, where there was a heavenly calm--and death! But
the descent did not last very long, careful as Roland was of every step;
and there was the top of George's hat bobbing about in the moonlight all
the time; for the surgeon had lost his way in the turret, and only came
down at last very warm and breathless when Isabel called to him from the
bottom of the stairs.
Sigismund and the orphans appeared at the same moment.
Mr. Raymond had followed Roland and Isabel very closely, and they all
went together to the fly.
"Remember to-morrow," Mr. Lansdell said generally to the Graybridge
party as they took their seats. "I shall expect you as soon as the
afternoon service is over. I know you are regular church-goers at
Graybridge. Couldn't you come to Mordred for the afternoon service, by
the bye?--the church is well worth seeing." There was a little
discussion; and it was finally agreed that Mr. and Mrs. George Gilbert
and Sigismund should go to Mordred church on the following afternoon;
and then there was a good deal of hand-shaking before the carriage drove
away, and disappeared behind the sheltering edges that screened the
winding road.
"I'll see you and the children off, Raymond," Mr. Lansdell said, "before
I go myself."
"I'm not going away just this minute," Mr. Raymond answered gravely; "I
want to have a little talk with you first. There's something I
particularly want to say to you. Mrs. Primshaw," he cried to the
landlady of a little inn just opposite the castle-gates, a good-natured
rosy-faced young woman, who was standing on the threshold of her door
watching the movements of the gentlefolks, "will you take care of my
little girls, and see whether their wraps are warm enough for the drive
home, while I take a moonlight stroll with Mr. Lansdell?"
Mrs. Primshaw declared that nothing would give her greater pleasure than
to see to the comfort of the young ladies. So the orphans skipped across
the moonlit road, nowise sorry to take shelter in the pleasant
bar-parlour, all rosy and luminous with a cosy handful of bright fire in
the tiniest grate ever seen out of a doll's house.
Mr. Lansdell and Mr. Raymond walked along the lonely road under the
shadow of the castle wall, and for some minutes neither of them spoke.
Roland evinced no curiosity about, or interest in, that unknown
something which Mr. Raymond had to say to him; but there was a kind of
dogged sullenness in the carriage of his head, the fixed expression of
his face, that seemed to promise badly for the pleasantness of the
interview.
Perhaps Mr. Raymond saw this, and was rather puzzled how to commence the
conversation; at any rate, when he did begin, he began very abruptly,
taking what one might venture to call a conversational header.
"Roland," he said, "this won't do!"
"What won't do?" asked Mr. Lansdell, coolly.
"Of course, I don't set up for being your Mentor," returned Mr. Raymond,
"or for having any right to lecture you, or dictate to you. The tie of
kinsmanship between us is a very slight one: though, as far as that
goes, God knows that I could scarcely love you better than I do, if I
were your father. But if I were your father, I don't suppose you'd
listen to me, or heed me. Men never do in such matters as these. I've
lived my life, Roland, and I know too well how little good advice can do
in such a case as this. But I can't see you going wrong without trying
to stop you: and for that poor honest-hearted fellow yonder, for his
sake, I must speak, Roland. Have you any consciousness of the mischief
you're doing? have you any knowledge of the bottomless pit of sin, and
misery, and shame, and horror that you are digging before that foolish
woman's feet?"
"Why, Raymond," cried Mr. Lansdell, with a laugh,--not a very hearty
laugh, but something like that hollow mockery of merriment with which a
man greets the narration of some old Joe-Millerism that has been
familiar to him from his childhood,--"why, Raymond, you're as obscure as
a modern poet! What do you mean? Who's the honest-hearted fellow? and
who's the foolish woman? and what's the nature of the business
altogether?"
"Roland, let us be frank with each other, at least. Do you remember how
you told me once that, when every bright illusion had dropped away from
you one by one, honour still remained,--- a poor pallid star, compared
to those other lights that had perished in the darkness, but still
bright enough to keep you in the straight road? Has that last light gone
out with the rest, Roland, my poor melancholy boy,--my boy whom I have
loved as my own child?--will the day ever come when I shall have to be
ashamed of Anna Lansdell's only son?"
His mother's name had always something of a spell for Roland. His head,
so proudly held before, drooped suddenly, and he walked on in silence
for some little time. Mr. Raymond was also silent. He had drawn some
good augury from the altered carriage of the young man's head, and was
loth to disturb the current of his thoughts. When Roland did at last
raise his head, he turned and looked his friend and kinsman full in the
face.
"Raymond," he said, "I am not a good man;" he was very fond of making
this declaration, and I think he fancied that in so doing he made some
vague atonement for his short-comings: "I am not a good man, but I am no
hypocrite; I will not lie to you, or prevaricate with you. Perhaps there
may be some justification for what you said just now, or there might be,
if I were a different sort of man. But, as it is, I give you my honour
you are mistaken. I have been digging no pit for a woman's innocent
footsteps to stray into. I have been plotting no treachery against that
honest fellow yonder. Remember, I do not by any means hold myself
blameless. I have admired Mrs. Gilbert just as one admires a pretty
child, and I have allowed myself to be amused by her sentimental talk,
and have lent her books, and may perhaps have paid her a little more
attention than I ought to have done. But I have done nothing
deliberately. I have never for one moment had any purpose in my mind, or
mixed her image with so much as a dream of--of--any tangible form. I
have drifted into a dangerous position, or a position that might be
dangerous to another man; but I can drift out of it as easily as I
drifted in. I shall leave Midlandshire next month."
"And to-morrow the Gilberts dine with you at Mordred; and all through
this month there will be the chance of your seeing Mrs. Gilbert, and
lending her more books, and paying her more attention; and so on. It is
not so much that I doubt you, Roland; I cannot think so meanly of you as
to doubt your honour in this business. But you are doing mischief; you
are turning this silly girl's head. It is no kindness to lend her books;
it is no kindness to invite her to Mordred, and to show her brief
glimpses of a life that never can be hers. If you want to do a good
deed, and to elevate her life out of its present dead level, make her
your almoner, and give her a hundred a year to distribute among her
husband's poor patients. The weak unhappy child is perishing for want of
some duty to perform upon this earth; some necessary task to keep her
busy from day to day, and to make a link between her husband and
herself. Roland, I do believe that you are as good and generous-minded a
fellow as ever an old bachelor was proud of. My dear boy, let me feel
prouder of you than I have ever felt yet. Leave Midlandshire to-morrow
morning. It will be easy to invent some excuse for going. Go to-morrow,
Roland."
"I will," answered Mr. Lansdell, after a brief pause; "I will go,
Raymond," he repeated, holding out his hand, and clasping that of his
friend. "I suppose I have been going a little astray lately; but I only
wanted the voice of a true-hearted fellow like you to call me back to
the straight road. I shall leave Midlandshire to-morrow, Raymond; and it
may be a very long time before you see me back again."
"Heaven knows I am sorry enough to lose you, my boy," Mr. Raymond said
with some emotion; "but I feel that it's the only thing for you to do. I
used sometimes to think, before George Gilbert offered to marry Isabel,
that you and she would have been suited to each other somehow; and I
have wished that--"
And here Mr. Raymond stopped abruptly, feeling that this speech was
scarcely the wisest he could have made.
But Roland Lansdell took no notice of that unlucky observation.
"I shall go to-morrow," he repeated. "I'm very glad you've spoken to me,
Raymond; I thank you most heartily for the advice you have given me this
night; and I shall go to-morrow."
And then his mind wandered away to his boyish studies in mythical Roman
history; and he wondered how Marcus Curtius felt just after making up
his mind to take the leap that made him famous. And then, with a sudden
slip from ancient to modern history, he thought of poor tender-hearted
Louise la Vallière running away and hiding herself in a convent, only to
have her pure thoughts and aspirations scattered like a cluster of frail
wood-anemones in a storm of wind--only to have her holy resolutions
trampled upon by the ruthless foot of an impetuous young king.