AT NASEDALE.
Mr. Horatio Mountjoy, the Anglo-Indian judge for whom Mrs.
MacClaverhouse had made her little dinner, had been one of the departed
general's most intimate friends, and having now returned to England to
pass the rest of his days in peaceful retirement, was anxious to show
all possible kindness to the general's widow.
He had bought an estate in Surrey since his return,--a charming old
mansion of the Queen Anne period, with prim gardens of the Dutch
school, a noble park, and a home-farm large enough to admit all the
experiments of an amateur agriculturist, but not so extensive as to
swamp the experimentalist's fortune. It was to this pleasant retreat
that Mr. Mountjoy invited his old friend's widow and her niece.
"We are to have a very nice party," wrote the judge's wife; "and
Horatio begs me to tell you that we shall expect _you_ and dear Lady
Cecil to stay till Christmas--even if our other friends grow tired of
us, and run away before then. I thought your niece was looking pale and
ill; but the breezes from the Surrey hills will set her up for next
season."
"Now that's what I call hospitality!" exclaimed Mrs. MacClaverhouse;
"but Mr. Mountjoy always was so magnificent in his way of doing things.
'That man has a regal mind,' I used to say to my husband, after one of
the Mountjoys' Calcutta dinner-parties. And she's a good warm-hearted
soul, though there's not much in her. There's nothing pays so well
as a long visit, Cecil; and if the Mountjoys press us to stay till
Christmas, I shall stay; for skipping about from one house to another
eats into so much money in the way of travelling-expenses and servants'
fees, that you might almost as well stop at home."
Cecil could only acquiesce in her aunt's arrangement. What was she
but the handmaiden of her kindly protectress, bound to go wherever
the lively dowager chose to take her, and to be pleased and merry at
the will of others? She was very tired of her life. Driving through
pleasant suburbs in the phantom chariot, she looked with sad yearning
eyes at tiny cottages, enshrined in tiny gardens, and thought how
simple and placid existence might be in such modest habitations.
"What happiness to be one's own mistress!" she thought, "never to be
obliged to smile when one is sad, or talk and laugh for the pleasure of
other people. If my poor father had left me a hundred a-year I might
have lived in such a cottage, with my books and piano, and a few birds
and flowers. I might have been good to the poor, even; for it is so
easy for poor people to help one another. I envy the dowdiest old maid
who ever eked out her tiny income. I envy any one and every one who can
live their own lives."
But after indulging in such thoughts as these Cecil felt ashamed of
the ingratitude involved in her mute repinings. Was not her kinswoman
good and affectionate after her own sharp fashion? and was it not
the dependant's duty to be pleased and satisfied with the home that
sheltered her? Even if there was some sacrifice of freedom demanded
from her, Cecil could have made that sacrifice without complaining,
if the dowager would only have let her alone. But to refrain from
interference with the business of other people was just one of those
things which Mrs. MacClaverhouse could not do. She had set her heart
upon her niece making a good marriage, and to that end she kept watch
upon every eligible bachelor who came within her ken.
It was in vain that Cecil protested against any thing like matrimonial
scheming in her behalf. The dowager did not hesitate to remind her of
the dull dead level of poverty that lay before her in the future.
"Do you happen to remember that my pension dies with me Lady Cecil,"
she demanded angrily, "and that I have only a wretched pittance and a
collection of obsolete Indian trumpery to leave you? So long as I live
you will be able to keep afloat somehow in society; but I should like
to know what will become of you when I am gone? You turn up your nose
at my managing ways; but it is only by management that I have contrived
to keep my head above water, and have my own carriage to ride in, and
my own maid to travel with me. As for you, you are no more of a manager
than one of those Indian idols; and a landlady who wouldn't dare to
take half a glass of wine out of the cellaret or a spoonful of tea
out of the caddy while I am alive, would pilfer you out of house and
home before I'd been in my grave a month. It's all very well to talk
about not wishing to marry, and being happy alone with your books and
piano, and so forth; but you're not the stuff old maids are made of,
Lady Cecil. The girls of the present day are not brought up to make old
maids. They are like the houses that the cheap builders run up, that
are made to sell, and not to last. The girls of the present day are
delightful creatures, but they are brought up to marry rich men and
live in fine houses, and be imposed upon by their servants. I pity the
children of the rising generation, for they will have no maiden aunts
to spoil them."
Mrs. MacClaverhouse had been shrewd enough to perceive the impression
made on Mr. O'Boyneville by her niece's attractions. She knew that the
barrister was rich--and, indeed, had sounded Mr. Crawford as to his
probable income, which was of course exaggerated by the painter, who
accepted the popular report of the lawyer's gains without that grain
of salt with which all such reports should be taken. On questioning
Cecil very closely respecting Mr. O'Boyneville's call, the dowager had
speedily perceived that something special had distinguished it from
common visits.
"He asked my permission to call," said Mrs. MacClaverhouse; "and he
said quite enough to convince me that he had fallen over head and ears
in love with you. It's my opinion he came to make you an offer of
marriage; and that's why I kept out of the way. But, bless my heart and
soul! I needn't have taken the trouble--for of course you refused him;
though I am told his income is little short of four thousand a-year.
You are bent upon dying a homeless pauper, and all I hope is that
they'll have improved the casual wards of the unions before your time."
Cecil tried to parry Mrs. MacClaverhouse's attack, but the elder lady
was past mistress of the polite art of conversational fencing, and she
did not abandon the assault until her niece had unwillingly confessed
the secret of Mr. O'Boyneville's visit.
"And you refused him!" shrieked the indignant dowager. "That's what I
call flying in the face of Providence. This is the second chance you've
had within two years, Lady Cecil Chudleigh, and I hope I may live to
wish you joy of the third; but I freely confess I don't expect to do
so."
This sort of expostulation is by no means pleasant to hear, and poor
Cecil had to listen patiently to much harping on the same string. She
was familiar with every variation which such a theme can undergo in the
hands of a skilful composer,--the minor wailings and lamentations, the
brilliant crescendos of feminine mockery, the bass grumblings and sharp
forte passages of anger, the peevish rallentandos and diminuendos. The
unhappy girl bore it all, but she suffered acutely.
The change to Nasedale did not set her free from her aunt's lectures;
for considerate Mrs. Mountjoy allotted two charming bed-rooms, with a
pretty sitting-room between them, to the two ladies; and here, on rainy
days, Cecil enjoyed a great deal of her aunt's society.
"I don't want to detain you here if you'd rather be in the
billiard-room, or making yourself sticky with _décalcomanie_ amongst
those frivolous girls in the drawing-room. What regiments of girls
there are in the world! and what in goodness' name is to become of them
all, I wonder!" exclaimed the dowager, parenthetically. "As to the
men the Mountjoys have collected, I never saw so many married fogies
gathered together in one house; and the way they stuff themselves at
luncheon is something dreadful. Tiffin, indeed! I'd tiffin them if
they were my visitors. A glass of dry sherry at thirty-five shillings
a dozen and a picnic biscuit is all they'd get between breakfast and
dinner from me."
But Nasedale was a very pleasant place, in spite of the elderly fogies
who over-ate themselves at luncheon, and the frivolous young ladies who
devoted themselves to the decoration of cups and saucers that wouldn't
bear washing, and dessert plates the painted splendours of which rarely
survived the ordeal of preserved ginger or guava jelly.
Hospitality reigned supreme in the comfortable mansion. People did as
they liked. The scenery for twenty miles round was superb; and if Mr.
Mountjoy was not quite so magnificent as the nabob who ordered "more
curricles," the Nasedale stables supplied plenty of horses, and the
Nasedale coach-houses contained every variety of modern vehicle for the
accommodation of the visitors, from the omnibus which took the servants
to church or the ladies to a county ball, to the miniature Croydon
basket-chaise and the deliciously stumpy little pony, which the most
timid of the décalcomaniacs was scarcely afraid to drive.
After returning from a hurried run up to town, the judge astonished
the dowager, and considerably disconcerted Cecil, by exclaiming in the
middle of dinner:
"Oh, by-the-bye, Mrs. MacClaverhouse, I met your friend O'Boyneville in
Lincoln's Inn to-day, and I asked him if he could run down for a day or
two. He seems to be full of business; but when he heard you were down
here, he evidently felt inclined to come. Not very flattering to me,
you'll say. I told him of our archery-meeting on the twentieth, and he
said, 'If it's possible, I'll be down in time for the archery-meeting;
but it's about as nearly impossible as any thing human can be.'"
Lady Cecil breathed more freely. She dreaded the appearance of her
rejected suitor, and the friendly persecution to which his coming would
inevitably expose her. But when the two ladies retired to their room
that night, the dowager cried triumphantly:
"If Mr. O'Boyneville is as much in earnest as I think he is, he'll come
to the archery-meeting, Cecil; and I do hope, if he renews his offer,
you'll be wise enough to accept it."
The archery-meeting of which the judge had spoken was to be a very
grand affair, and the young ladies at Nasedale had made their fingers
sore and their shoulders weary with the twanging of bows. The meeting
was to take place on a noble plateau, at the top of the noblest range
of hills in all Surrey; and all the fun of a picnic was to be combined
with the excitement of a toxophilite contest.
"We might have had our archery-meeting in the park," said the judge,
when he explained to his guests the arrangements he had made for
their pleasure; "but to my mind half the fun of these things is in
the going and returning. The officers of the 14th are to drive over
from Burtonslowe to meet us; and I've invited all sorts of people from
town. I won't say any thing about the two prizes I selected at Hunt and
Roskell's this morning; but I hope my taste will please the ladies who
win them."
Cecil did not affect the twanging of bows, and was content to remain
amongst the young ladies who, after vainly endeavouring to hit the
bull's-eye, and losing their arrows in distant brushwood, without
having so much as grazed the outermost edge of the target, retired from
the contest, and declared that there was nothing so very exciting in
archery after all, and that croquet was twenty times better. Amongst
these milder spirits Cecil beguiled the fine summer afternoons with
that gentle tapping of wooden-balls, and liberal display of high-heeled
boots, which is the favourite dissipation of modern damsels; and thus,
amid quiet pleasures, with a good deal of riding and driving, and
novel-reading and billiard-playing, and much good eating and drinking,
time glided by at Nasedale until the nineteenth, and as yet there were
no signs of the Queen's Counsel.
"If O'Boyneville had meant to be amongst us to-morrow he'd have made
his appearance by this time," said the judge in the course of dinner.
"He knows we start early to-morrow morning."
"I can't fancy O'Boyneville at a picnic," said a listless young
gentleman who was amongst the new arrivals. "I can't fancy him any
where except in the law courts. One sometimes meets him at men's
dinners, but he never seems to enjoy himself unless he can talk _shop_,
and he looks at the other fellows as if he'd like to cross-examine
them."
The usual meanderings on the terrace outside the drawing-room windows,
with which the younger members of the Nasedale party were wont to
beguile the warm summer evenings, were impossible to-night, for at
nine o'clock a violent clap of thunder shook the roofs and chimneys of
the old mansion, and pretty little feminine shriekings and screechings
fluttered the tranquillity of the party. The young ladies who were not
afraid of the lightning made a merit of not being afraid; and the young
ladies who were afraid made a merit of being horribly frightened, and
shivered and started in the most bewitching manner at sight of every
flash. And one young lady who had written a volume of poetry, in which
a weak solution of L. E. L. was artfully intermingled with a still
weaker solution of Mrs. Browning, stood before a window and exclaimed
about the grandeur and sublimity of the spectacle.
Cecil, sitting quietly at work under a reading-lamp, was rather
rejoiced when she heard the violent downpour of rain which succeeded
the storm.
"Mr. O'Boyneville will scarcely come to-night, at any rate," she
thought.
There was a great deal of lamentation about the rain, and considerable
discussion as to whether it augured ill or well for the morrow. It was
a blessing to get the storm over. But then the grass would be damp,
most likely, and so on. The young ladies thought of their delicate
boots, their dainty dresses.
"My hat cost two guineas and a half," murmured one damsel to a
sympathising confidante. "A ruche of peacock's feathers, you know,
dear; and the sweetest mother-of-pearl butterfly, and a tiny, tiny
green-chenille bird's-nest, with three gold eggs in it, at the
side--and one shower of rain would utterly spoil it."
The rain came thicker and faster. Nothing short of a hurricane would
serve to dry the grass after such a storm. But Cecil did not think of
the picnic; she only congratulated herself upon the improbability that
Mr. O'Boyneville would care to travel in such weather.
"No chance of O'Boyneville," said Mr. Mountjoy, as he stood before
the fire which he had ordered to be lighted since the advent of the
rain. "I told him to write and announce his coming, so that I might
send a vehicle over to the station to meet him. It's a ten-mile drive,
you know, and there's very seldom so much as a fly to be had at that
miserable little station. However, the last London post is in, and
there's no letter from O'Boyneville."
The pattering of the rain against the windows made itself heard in
every pause of the conversation, and the noise of the pelting drops
grew louder every moment. Cecil was still bending quietly over her work
in a cosy corner near the angle of the wide velvet-covered mantelpiece,
and the judge's guests had gathered in a circle about the cheery fire,
when the bell of the great hall-door rang loudly.
"Who the deuce can that be, at this time of night, and at this time of
such a night?" cried Mr. Mountjoy.
"Whoever he is, he is the owner of a tolerably strong arm, and he knows
how to make his arrival public," said one of the listless visitors.
The drawing-room opened out of the hall; and in the silence that
followed the clamour of the bell, Mr. Mountjoy and his visitors heard
the opening of the ponderous door, the rapid accents of a sonorous
bass voice asking questions, and a fluttering sound which resembled
the noise made by an enormous Newfoundland-dog who shakes himself dry
after emerging from the water.
There was a pause of some ten minutes, and then the drawing-room door
was thrown open, and the servant announced:
"Mr. O'Boyneville."
"I thought as much," said the dowager in an undertone, which was
intended only for the ear of her niece.
The barrister made his appearance, a little damp and weather-stained,
in spite of the hurried toilet he had made since entering the house,
but with the freshness of the open air upon him, and the aspect of a
man whose heart is aglow with triumph. He received the cordial welcome
of his host, shook hands with the people he knew, offered a big cold
paw to Cecil as coolly as if there had been nothing out of the common
in their last parting, showed his white teeth, laughed at nothing
particular till every crystal drop in the old-fashioned chandelier
shivered and trembled, and, in short, made more noise in five minutes
than the rest of the party had made in the whole of the evening.
"Yes, it certainly isn't the nicest weather for travelling," he said,
in reply to his host's eager inquiries; but you see I said I'd come
if it was possible; and here I am. I was on a committee in Victoria
Street at half-past five; took a hansom, and told the man to drive to
Brunswick Square like wildfire; packed my portmanteau and put on my
dress-coat while the man waited; drove to the Oriental Club, and left
my portmanteau with the porter while I dined with the Governor-General
of Seringapatam; rose from the table at a quarter before nine, borrowed
a railway rug from one of the waiters, and caught the nine-o'clock
train at Waterloo; found myself an hour after at a little station where
there was one deaf porter, and no vehicle of any description whatever;
held considerable difficulty in getting any thing at all out of the
deaf porter; but finally extracted the pleasing intelligence that
Nasedale was a good ten miles, and that, barring John Cole's own bay
mare at the Pig and Whistle, there wasn't an animal of any kind to be
had within a mile and a half. Of course, after hearing this, the best
thing was to get John Cole's bay mare; and fine work I had with John
Cole before he would let me have the beast, which he keeps for his own
pleasure and convenience, and which has never been ridden or driven
by man or boy except himself since he bought her at Barnet Fair, six
years come next October. However, when he saw that I meant to have
the animal whether he liked it or not, and when he heard where I was
coming, he made a virtue of necessity, and brought her out--and here
I am: and I think, my dear Mountjoy, of all the Lanes I ever had the
pleasure of beholding, the lanes between this place and the station
are the muddiest; and of all the rain that ever reduced the civilised
universe to pulp and slop, the rain I came through to-night has been the
heaviest."
After this Mr. O'Boyneville took possession of the company, as it was
his wont to take possession of any assemblage in which he happened to
find himself. He went into society very rarely, and the laws of society
had very little restraint for him. He could talk well, and he knew
that he could talk well. The necessities of his professional career
had obliged him to possess himself of a superficial knowledge of every
subject, and some smattering of almost every science. A native audacity
did the rest; and a frank _bonhomie_ of manner, a slap-dash mode of
expression, which was too original to be vulgar, won the suffrages of
people who would have tabooed a smaller man for lesser sins against
conventionality than those which were permitted in Mr. O'Boyneville.
He talked well, and like most good talkers, he very often talked
nonsense; for the man who weighs his sentences before he utters them,
who pauses to consider the force of an argument before he launches
it, is rarely a brilliant conversationalist. And sometimes it seems
as if the brightest creatures of the brain are those ephemeral and
unconsidered trifles which a man utters haphazard in the heat of
argument or the abandonment of purposeless small-talk. Posterity values
Samuel Johnson rather for the happy sayings of a convivial evening
than for the ponderous polysyllables of his most carefully considered
compositions.
A silver salver, bearing a monster tankard of mulled claret, was
brought into the drawing-room before the assembly dispersed; and in the
diversion afforded by the handing about of the wine, Mr. O'Boyneville
contrived to seat himself between Cecil and her aunt; and after
artfully conciliating the elder lady, he drew his chair near to the
little table by which the younger sat absorbed in her work.
"You don't know what difficulty I had to get here to-night, Lady
Cecil," he said; "and it was only because you are here that I came."
"Then I am very sorry you should have come," answered Cecil gravely.
"Are you still so hard-hearted?"
"Mr. O'Boyneville! Is it a gentlemanly act to follow me here, where I
have no power to avoid you, and to talk to me in this manner? If you
come here for your own pleasure, to make one of an agreeable party, I
am as happy to see you as any one else in this house can be. But if you
come here to persecute me by attentions which are as ungentlemanly as
they are foolish, I shall beg my aunt to take me away from this house
to-morrow morning."
The barrister looked at her pale proud face with an expression of
profound sorrow.
"That will do, Lady Cecil," he said; "that is quite enough. I thought
what you said the other day might mean only a lady's negative. I
thought I was too abrupt--that I surprised and offended you by my way
of plunging into the subject, and so on. But I see now that I was
mistaken. Good-night, Lady Cecil; I shall never offend you again."
He held out his hand, but he scarcely clasped her slender fingers as
they rested for one brief moment in his expansive palm. The sadness in
his voice, the sorrowful expression of his face had touched her, and
she felt the natural womanly desire to heal the wounds she herself had
inflicted. But before she could think of any thing to say which should
in some degree console the Irishman's wounded feelings, yet in no
manner embolden him to renew his attack, Mr. O'Boyneville had left her,
and was bidding his host good-night.
Lady Cecil had to endure a lecture from her aunt before she shut
herself in her own room that night; and when she went to bed it was to
think compassionately of the Irish barrister's sorrow.
And while she pitied him, Mr. O'Boyneville settled himself complacently
to his placid slumber, and mused upon the evening's adventures as he
fell asleep.
"You are very haughty and you're very resolute; but you'll marry me
sooner or later, for all that, my bright Cecil, my beautiful Cecil. It
isn't possible for a man to be as much in earnest as I am, and yet wind
up by making a failure."