MR. O'BOYNEVILLE'S MOTION FOR A NEW TRIAL.
The Nasedale picnic, or the Nasedale archery-meeting, was a success;
but it may be that the noble supply of sparkling wines, the gorgeous
banquet of delicate viands, set forth under a spacious marquee,
contributed as much as the excitement of the toxophilite contest to the
gaiety of the day. Mr. O'Boyneville forgot his profession, and behaved
as if he had spent the greater part of his existence at toxophilite
meetings and picnics. Cecil heard more than one young lady declare
that the Irishman was the life of the party, and she had reason to be
grateful to him for his delicate avoidance of her; even though her good
taste might compel her to condemn his too obvious flirtation with more
than one fair damsel in Lincoln green.
But if Cecil was glad to be released from the attentions of the
Queen's Counsel, Cecil's aunt was by no means pleased with the altered
aspect of affairs. She glowered upon the unconscious O'Boyneville from
the distance whence she watched his proceedings, and was snappishly
disposed towards the young ladies with whom he had flirted whenever
they happened to cross her path. Once only in the course of the day had
she any opportunity of addressing her niece confidentially, and then
her manner assumed its bitterest shade.
"I hope you are satisfied _now_, Lady Cecil Chudleigh," she said.
And at night, when the long day's festivity and flirtation, and archery
and croquet, and dust and sunshine, had at length come to a close, Mrs.
MacClaverhouse was eager to attack her dependant. But Cecil stopped her
at the first word.
"Pray do not say any more about this business, auntie," she said, in a
quiet resolute tone. "If you are angry with me because I am unwilling
to marry Mr. O'Boyneville, whom you wish me to marry only because he
is rich, I must submit to your anger, and leave you. I will not stop
with you to be persecuted upon such a subject; and if I have displeased
you, I can only thank you for all your past goodness to me and bid you
good-bye."
If people ever said "Hoity-toity!" Mrs. MacClaverhouse was just in
the humour to have indulged in such an ejaculation. But she contented
herself with exclaiming,
"Well, I'm sure! The young women of the present day fly in a passion if
you venture to say an unpleasant word to them. The world is moving on
at a nice pace, upon my word. I wonder what the children of the rising
generation will be like, and how _they'll_ treat their mothers and
aunts. I suppose they'll take the story of the Grecian daughter out of
_those_ children's story-books, and supply its place with 'The Obedient
Father,' or 'The Dutiful Grandmother,' or 'Parental Submission,' or
something of that kind. You may go to bed, Lady Cecil; and since you
are bent upon ending your days as an indoor pauper, you must go your
own way, and I wash my hands of all responsibility."
The dowager carried matters with a high hand, but Cecil had vanquished
her nevertheless; and though Mr. O'Boyneville had left Nasedale before
the family met at the breakfast-table, Mrs. MacClaverhouse forbore to
bewail his departure in her niece's presence. He had gone; but when his
circuit work was over he came back again, and made himself a favourite
with all the household. He had his own little study, and he had some
of the judge's law-books carried thither for his use. He spent three
or four hours every morning in hard work; and for the rest of the
day was the life of the party, talking, arguing, disputing, putting
down listless visitors, and laughing his great haw-haw laugh at their
discomfiture; cross-examining pretentious talkers, and bringing them
to shame; flattering frivolous matrons, expounding great political
theories with much flourishing of his white hands, delighting the
Anglo-Indian judge by respectful attention to his anecdotes, offending
and pleasing people a hundred times a day, and making himself the
principal figure in every group, his voice the ruling voice in every
discussion.
And in all this time Lady Cecil had no reason to complain of his
presence. He was true to the quiet tone of resignation with which he
had received her reproof on the first night of his coming to Nasedale.
If he addressed her now, it was as nearly in the ordinary tone of
polite society as was possible to this rough diamond of the British
law-courts. Nor did he in any special manner seek her society. Mrs.
MacClaverhouse sniffed ominously as she watched the eligible bachelor's
attentions to other young ladies, while Cecil sat unnoticed and
apparently forgotten by her late admirer. But the dowager refrained
from remonstrance, and only allowed stray allusions to the horrors of
genteel pauperism, and the miserable destiny of the unprotected female,
to crop up now and then in her confidential talk with her niece.
And Cecil was satisfied. She had subdued her aunt, and had freed
herself from the unwelcome attentions of an audacious adorer. She was
inclined to feel kindly disposed towards Mr. O'Boyneville now that he
no longer presented himself before her in the absurd position of a
lover. She was able to appreciate his cleverness now that her aunt no
longer harped upon the amount of his income. She owned to herself that
many a girl in her position would have been glad to accept the hand and
heart of this stalwart, good-looking, loud-voiced Irishman. She grew
accustomed to his noisy laugh, his boisterous gaiety, his energetic
declamation. His animal spirits in this rare holiday time made him as
boisterous as an overgrown schoolboy; and there is always something
pleasant in the fresh joyousness of a schoolboy in the abstract,
however obnoxious that member of society may make himself in the
concrete. Lady Cecil, who had begun by thinking Lauren O'Boyneville
the most unpleasant of men, came to consider him as a person whose
friendship at least was worth possessing.
He had spent a week at Nasedale, talking every morning of leaving
before night, and lingering day after day until the week was out! But
at last he announced his departure so positively, that to have changed
his mind after such an announcement would have been a weakness unworthy
a man of business. A vacancy had arisen in a certain northern borough,
and some of Mr. O'Boyneville's friends had persuaded him to allow
himself to be put in nomination. To linger longer in that garden of
Armida called Nasedale would be to endanger this new ambition. Every
body was loud in lamentation of his departure, with the exception of
those younger and more superciliously indifferent gentlemen whom he
had made a point of annihilating once or twice in the course of every
evening.
The feminine portion of the community was not behind-hand in the
expression of regret. The young ladies declared they should miss
Mr. O'Boyneville "terribly," "awfully;" one rather fast young lady
went so far as to say "disgustingly." Had he not appointed himself
the umpire of their toxophilite matches? Had he not learned the
whole art of croquet in half an hour, and then insisted on playing
after a fashion of his own, whereby he had split a dozen or so of
walnut-wood balls in a week? Had he not thrown them into convulsions
of laughter one evening by conducting a mock trial of a case of breach
of promise,--the broken pledge being that of a botanically-disposed
young gentleman who had promised to go out for a woodland ramble
with three botanically-disposed young ladies, and had gone partridge
shooting instead? Was he not the most delightful middle-aged creature
in existence?--and not so dreadfully middle-aged either, for he could
scarcely be forty--and what is forty, but the prime of life, the
meridian of intellectual splendour?
To such discourse as this Cecil had to listen during the rainy morning
which succeeded Mr. O'Boyneville's departure. The feminine assembly in
the pretty old-fashioned painted drawing-room enlivened the labours of
_décalcomanie_ and Berlin wool-work with their praises of the departed
barrister.
The matrons were as enthusiastic as their daughters. Of all partners
at whist there was no one they had ever met so invincible as Mr.
O'Boyneville, although he had declared that he had not handled a card
since his boyhood; and then he was so unlike the young men who call a
middle-aged lady "a venerable party," and a sober married man a "dozy
old bird." And then--and then--and then--there seemed no end to the
feminine laudation of Laurence O'Boyneville. Only two ladies in that
assembly were silent, and those two were Cecil Chudleigh and Mrs.
MacClaverhouse. But an occasional impatient sniff from the dowager gave
evidence of her state of mind.
He was gone, and every one was loud in his praise. He was gone; and
though Cecil Chudleigh had only been accustomed to his presence within
the last six or seven days, the place seemed to her just a little dull
and empty without him, and she was fain to confess to herself that
she as well as the others missed the sound of his sonorous voice, the
gaiety of his boisterous laugh.
And from thinking of the departed Queen's Counsel, she went on, by some
indefinable train of thought, to pondering upon the dull blank life of
spinsterhood and poverty that lay before her; to muse a little sadly
upon the text of all her aunt's sermons--her lonely helplessness, her
penniless dependence. The present was well enough so long as it lasted.
She was happy, or at any rate, content, even though the dowager's
temper grew sharper, and the dowager's tongue more bitter, every day.
She was resigned to the prospect of alternating between Dorset Square
and watering-places and other people's houses for the rest of her life.
But there were times when her pride revolted against the whole scheme
of her existence, and a vision of the future arose before her, blank
and terrible. She was such an unnecessary creature, such a mere waif
and stray, to be drifted hither and thither on every tide which carried
her kinswoman; a lady's-maid without a lady's-maid's wages; a slave
without a slave's apathy.
"Perhaps my aunt is right after all," she thought, bitterly, "and I
have been foolish to throw away any chance that would have given me
release from such an existence."
The day was wet, and dull, and miserable; the sort of day so
harmoniously described in Mr. Longfellow's poem. The dead leaves fell
from the dripping trees in the park, and the splash of the rain upon
the terrace made a monotonous accompaniment to conversation. The
gentlemen of the household had defied Jupiter Pluvius, and had set off
at early morning, provided with water-proof garments and the clumpiest
of shooting-boots, to wage war upon innocent young partridges in
stubble and turnip-field. But they came home at three; and after a
tremendous luncheon and a careful toilet, presented themselves in the
drawing-room, where they proposed an immediate adjournment for a game
of billiards.
The young ladies were delighted to accept the invitation. Two or three
good-natured matrons consented to join the party; while less vivacious
dames discovered suddenly that they had important letters to write
in their own rooms, which important correspondence was popularly
supposed to be the ladylike excuse for an after-luncheon nap. Mrs.
MacClaverhouse was among the matrons who retired to her apartment.
"I suppose you'll come up stairs to have some tea at six, Lady Cecil,"
she said to her niece, whom she had addressed in this ceremonious
manner throughout the visit of Mr. O'Boyneville.
"But you'll come and play, Lady Cecil?" cried one of the young ladies.
"No, thank you, dear; I, too, have got some letters to write."
"I don't believe a bit in people's letters!" exclaimed the impetuous
young damsel. "Letter-writing in country-houses is nothing but an
excuse for being unsociable;--isn't it, dear Mrs. Mountjoy? If I were
you I'd put up an inscription over my hall-door: 'No letters to be
written on any pretence whatever.' I would do away with the post-bag,
and oblige my visitors to correspond with friends at a distance by
electric telegraph.'"
After which the lively damsel skipped off with her arm encircling
her dear Mrs. Mountjoy's waist, and Cecil found herself alone in the
drawing-room.
Of course she had letters to write--if she found herself equal to the
labour of writing them. Where is the civilised being who can honestly
declare that he or she has wronged no man in the matter of neglected
correspondence? Cecil was deeply in debt to half-a-dozen lively friends
who wrote her long descriptions of the places where they were staying,
and were eager to receive her account of the place where she was
staying, and the people whom she met there. She was in debt to Flo, who
sent her voluminous epistles from Brighton, with pen-and-ink sketches
of eccentric costumes to be seen on the King's Road, and caricatures
of Mr. Lobyer in divers attitudes. He passed the greater part of his
existence on the Brighton Railway, Flo told her friend. "And if the
Brighton line were not the best in England, the unhappy being would be
reduced to a state of imbecility by the effects of railway-travelling,"
added Miss Crawford.
Cecil meant to write her letters before the first dinner-bell rang;
but when the billiard-players had left her, she sank into a luxurious
easy-chair by the fire, and sat looking dreamily at the red coals. She
was in one of those melancholy moods which come upon a woman sometimes
without any tangible reason, but which are not the less sad because
their sadness is vague and intangible. For the moment she abandoned
herself utterly to sorrowful musings. The past--that shadowy past
which always comes back to the gayest of us with a sorrowful aspect,
returned to Cecil as she brooded over the low, neglected fire. Her
father, her mother--the loved and lost--whose faces had once made
the sole brightness of her life, looked at her once more out of the
shadows. She thought of what her life might have been if her father's
fortune had never been wasted. Before her sad eyes arose the picture
of the home that might have been hers if her only brother had lived to
mend his wild ways and hold his own among honest men.
"I should never have felt this bitter sense of loneliness if my brother
had been my protector," she thought. "There is something in my aunt's
kindness--even when she is most kind--that reminds me how little right
I have to her love or protection."
Abandoned to such melancholy thoughts as these, Cecil kept little note
of the progress of time. A servant came into the room to replenish
the fire, but his coming and going did not arouse her from her sombre
reverie. The dull afternoon sky grew duller, and her thoughts grew
sadder as the sky darkened. A bell rang, but she took no heed of its
ringing. What was it to her who came or went? In the utter solitude of
her life there was no room for care, for there was no one upon earth
except her aunt whose fate was in any way involved with her own. She
heard a rapid footstep in the hall, a hand turning the handle of the
door, and she shrugged her shoulders impatiently, knowing that she
would have to put aside her sorrowful thoughts, to smile upon the
intruder.
She looked up as the door opened, and it was with unmitigated
astonishment that she beheld Laurence O'Boyneville.
"Mr. O'Boyneville! I thought you had left us for good?"
"And so I had, Lady Cecil, as I thought. But there are some places, or
rather some people, whom it is very difficult to leave. I have been to
London, got through a gigantic day's business, made arrangements for
starting on my parliamentary work to-morrow instead of to-day, and have
come back here--for an hour."
"For an hour?" echoed Cecil.
"Yes," answered the barrister, taking out his watch, and comparing it
with the clock on the mantelpiece. "It's now half-past five by me;
though it's only a quarter-past by my friend Mephistopheles and the
ivy-leaves. At 7.36 the up-train leaves that miserable shed called
Desborough station. I was lucky enough to get a fly this time, and the
antiquated vehicle is waiting for me."
"I fear Mr. Mountjoy has gone out," said Cecil, who imagined that her
late admirer must needs have some important business to transact with
his host, since only some affair of importance could have brought
him back so hurriedly. "But you will find almost every body in the
billiard-room, and no doubt some one there will be able to tell you
where he is."
"You are very good; but I don't want to see Mr. Mountjoy."
"You don't?"
"Not----" Mr. O'Boyneville was on the verge of saying "Not a ha'porth,"
but he substituted, "not in the least. In fact, I'm very grateful to
the dear old fellow for being out of the way. I have come back to see
you, Lady Cecil."
There was a little pause. Cecil could find nothing to say. The sense
of Mr. O'Boyneville's power subjugated her as she had never before
been subjugated. She was like the weakest of little birds who was ever
spell-bound by the gaze of a monster serpent.
Whether it was animal magnetism, whether it was the intellectual force
of a dominant will, she never knew. From first to last, she knew only
that Laurence O'Boyneville exercised an influence over her which no
other living creature had ever exercised, and that she was powerless to
resist his dominion.
The Irishman seated himself, and drew his chair close to hers.
"Cecil," he said, "why should we trifle with our destiny? In the first
hour in which I saw you, something told me that you were to be my
wife, and in pursuing you I have only obeyed the voice of my fate. I
am not a romantic man, and the current of my life has taken its course
between the most arid and blossomless shores that border the great
river: but some remnant of my national superstition clings to me still;
and from the first moment in which I looked upon you, I felt that you
were something more to me than the crowds of pretty women whose faces
have floated past me like the faces of a dream. You have thought me
insolent, presumptuous! Believe me, Lady Cecil, I have been neither.
It has been no confidence in my own merits that has made me so bold. I
have been bold only because I believed in my fate. When I came here,
I came at peril of hopes that had once been the brightest part of my
life. The man whose dinner-table I left unceremoniously to come to this
house is a man who can raise me to the bench. I, to whom social life is
almost as strange as it would be to an Ojibbeway, have wasted a week in
knocking about wooden balls and holding bad hands at long whist. And I
have done this because I wanted to be near you, Lady Cecil. I knew from
the first that you were intended to be my wife, and that it rested with
me alone to win you. Cecil, dear Cecil, are you going to fly in the
face of your destiny?"
These were the tenderest words he had ever addressed to her. His voice,
practised in every transition, sank to its most melodious tones as he
uttered these last words. Perhaps there is some magnetic power in such
a voice. Cecil, looking up at the earnest face that was bent towards
hers, felt herself subdued by some wondrous fascination, and knew that
she had found her master. Had he wooed her at any other moment it might
have been different; but he came to her in an interval of depression,
which had subdued her courage and crushed her pride. Never had the dull
stagnation of her life seemed to her so dull and hopeless as it had
seemed to-day. Never had the prospect of the future appeared so utterly
blank and empty. Her aunt's sermonising, her sense of loneliness, her
yearning desire for some change in the routine of her profitless life,
all conspired to strengthen the cause of Mr. O'Boyneville.
"Cecil, are you going to send me away again?"
"Suppose I do not believe in your fatalistic theory?" she asked, with a
faint attempt at a laugh.
"Your incredulity will not help you. What is it the Turks say?
'Kismet'--It is written. You are to be my wife, Lady Cecil. It is
only a question of time, and why should we waste time in discussion?
Sooner or later the hour of victory will come. Cecil, you thought me an
impertinent fool when I first told you of my love; you know me better
now, and you must know that I am in earnest. I have kept myself aloof
from you during the last week in order to show you that I can obey you.
If I disobey you in coming back to-day, it is because I obey my fate,
which is stronger than you."
Mr. O'Boyneville had composed this little speech during his downward
journey, and was rather inclined to be proud of it.
"Cecil, what is to be my answer?"
For some moments Lady Cecil was silent, her head averted from Mr.
O'Boyneville, her eyes looking dreamily at the fire. She was so
lonely, so unprotected; and here was this man, whose intellectual
power impressed her with a sense of protection and support; here was
this man, whom she had scorned and rejected, once more at her side,
too faithful to accept repulse, still eager to give her shelter and
affection, to lift her from the dreary uncertainty of her position into
woman's most fitting sphere. An hour ago, and she had felt herself
so utterly friendless; and now here were the love and devotion of a
lifetime lying at her feet, to be again rejected if she pleased. It
seemed almost as if Providence, taking compassion upon her loneliness,
had thrown this one last chance in her way.
Her voice trembled a little as she answered her lover.
"I do not know what I have done to deserve your love," she said; "but I
suppose love never yet was measured by desert. I do know that I cannot
give you what the world calls love in return. The only person I ever
loved left me to marry another woman. He left me because it was his
duty to do so; and I was proud of him because he was so good and true.
He is married now, and I have every reason to believe he is happy.
There is little chance that he and I will ever meet again; but if we
do, we shall meet as strangers. It was my bounden duty to tell you
this, Mr. O'Boyneville, before I answered your last question. Has my
confession altered your sentiments towards me?"
"No, Lady Cecil; it has only made me admire you a little more than I
did before. Do you think I expected to win the whole heart of such a
woman as you, all at once? No, Cecil; when a man loves the woman he
marries as truly as I love you, it must be his own fault if he does not
teach her to love him before the end of the chapter, always provided
she is a good woman."
"And you still offer me your affection?"
"I do. As heartily and as unreservedly as I offered it to you in the
first instance."
"And you will be my friend, my protector, my counsellor, all the wide
world to me--for I am very friendless--and will be contented with such
gratitude and such affection as a woman gives to the best and dearest
friend she has on earth?"
"More than content! unutterably happy!" cried Laurence O'Boyneville;
"and by Jove it's a quarter to six, and it's as much as I shall do to
catch the up-train," he added, in his most business-like manner, as he
started to his feet. He only lingered long enough to take Lady Cecil
in his arms, as if she had been a baby, to imprint one resounding kiss
upon her forehead, and to exclaim, "God bless you, and good-bye, my
darling!" and lo, he was gone.
"And I shall have a friend--a husband and protector--a home," thought
Cecil, with a thrill of happiness, such as she would a few hours
before have been slow to believe could have been inspired by Laurence
O'Boyneville.
She was glad to be bound to some one, to have some one bound to her;
glad to be the promised wife of this Irish barrister, whom she had so
lately spoken of shudderingly as a dreadful man.