TIDINGS FROM INDIA.
For Lady Cecil the summer months in Bloomsbury were very dreary. And it
may be here confessed that Bloomsbury is rather dreary in the summer
evenings, when the rifleman's "little drum has beat to bed" in the
quadrangle before the Foundling Hospital, and vagrant children hawk
pitiful bunches of flowers in the squares and streets. But are not the
endless terraces and oblong squares of Tyburnia, and even the broad
highways of Belgravia, apt to seem not a little dismal in the fading
light, when the sickly gas-lamps struggle faintly with the last glimmer
of day, and shabby wanderers prowl the pavements and look enviously at
the rolling chariots of wealth?
Cecil O'Boyneville abandoned herself entirely to the unbroken monotony
of her life. She had yet to learn to find her own society and her own
occupations, in common with the wives of other busy men. She accepted
the lot that fell into her lap, and did not attempt to change or modify
it. Her husband was kind to her, generous, affectionate, confiding, and
she wished to do her duty. If Laurence O'Boyneville made no change in
his bachelor-habits, if he devoted his nights to study and his evenings
to sleep, he had perhaps some excuse for his devotion to the profession
he loved, in the fact that his wife made no attempt to alter the
scheme of his existence. No salaried housekeeper could have been more
submissive than the Earl of Aspendell's daughter showed herself to the
sovereign will of her lord: so Mr. O'Boyneville told his old friends
and familiars that he was the happiest fellow in existence, and that
his wife was an angel.
He was happy, for the woman he loved received him with a tranquil smile
when he went home to his dinner, and was content to sit opposite to him
while he ate his hasty breakfast behind the _Times_ newspaper. Even in
his post-prandial slumbers he had a dim consciousness of that beloved
presence. But he did not very frequently take the trouble to tell his
young wife how dear she was to him. Having once won her to be the pride
and delight of his quiet home, he took things for granted, and forgot
that a man's real courtship only begins upon his wedding-day. If Cecil
had complained of her life, Laurence O'Boyneville would have speedily
set about adapting his existence to her pleasure; but she did not
complain. She had married him because he loved her, and not because she
loved him; and she shrank from indulging in the caprices which a wife
who truly loved her husband would have exhibited without scruple.
A profound weariness of spirit took possession of the barrister's wife
in the bright June weather, when the days were too brief for the glory
of western London, and the midsummer evenings too long for tranquil
Bloomsbury. For some time before her marriage it had seemed to Cecil
Chudleigh as if the serious business of her life had been done with.
She was not unhappy. She was not discontented. But she had finished
with all the eager hopes and desires of existence. She wished for
nothing, she expected nothing. One only yearning--and that no ardent or
passionate desire--had remained to her after the one great sorrow of
her life,--she had wished for a home; she had wished to be something
more than a waif and stray in other people's houses. This wish had been
realised, and henceforward there was nothing left for her to hope or
fear.
She had married without love; and yet no base or mercenary motive
had influenced her conduct. Truly and unreservedly had she given
her faith to Laurence O'Boyneville. It is for the man who marries
such a woman to win or lose the heart which is not--and yet is so
nearly--his. Unhappily, Mr. O'Boyneville, with all honesty of purpose
and generosity of heart, took the very way to lose the prize which, of
all earthly treasures, he most desired to obtain. If the barrister's
wife had dissolved into tears at the breakfast-table or disturbed his
digestive organs by a storm of hysterics after dinner, Mr. O'Boyneville
would have perceived that there was something out of gear amidst the
machinery of his home, and would have done his uttermost to remedy
the defect. But the disease which was undermining Lady Cecil's moral
constitution was not sorrow; it was only the absence of joy. Of what
could she complain, who desired nothing upon earth except a little
rest after the weariness of her youth? She rested to her heart's
content in the tranquil solitude of Brunswick Square, withdrawing
herself day by day more completely from all old associations. If the
days were joyless, they were at least without cares or troubles; the
sordid perplexities of the past were done with--that slow torture
called genteel poverty was hers no longer. An atmosphere of commonplace
comfort pervaded the great O'Boyneville's household; and even in Dorset
Square his presence seemed to carry with it an odour of prosperity--for
Cecil was surprised to find that her aunt no longer bewailed the
hardness of a dowager's lot, and the thievish propensities of
landladies. Poor Cecil, who was so painfully familiar with every note
in the gamut of Mrs. MacClaverhouse's domestic economy, was astonished
to behold those expensive and unprofitable dishes, which of old had
been excluded from the Dorset Square _menus_, now figuring frequently
in the little banquets which the dowager provided for Mr. O'Boyneville
and his wife.
"I ought to be happy," Cecil said to herself sometimes; and sometimes
even in saying those words the faint odour of the sea came back to
her like a breath of the past, and she saw the low grey shore below
Fortinbras Castle, and Hector Gordon's face bent over her in passionate
sadness.
"My fate was in my hand that day," she thought. "What would my life
have been now if I had chosen otherwise than I did?"
It was not often that such thoughts as these disturbed the dull
tranquillity of Cecil O'Boyneville's mind. She had learned to think
very calmly of Hector Gordon, and the unknown future that might have
been hers, long before she had plighted her faith to the barrister;
and it was only now and then that the picture of the past flashed for
a moment upon her mental vision, evoked into life and brightness by
some mystic power of association. She had learned long ago to think of
the Scottish captain almost as we think of the dead; and in counting
the years that had passed since that delicious autumn holiday, she
marvelled to find how few they were. It seemed so long since she had
seen that quiet Hampshire coast--so long since she had sat in the
shadowy drawing-room listening to the low music of her lover's voice.
The season came to a close, Trinity Term ended, and the long vacation
began. Laurence O'Boyneville implored his wife to take up her abode at
some pleasant watering-place while he went on circuit.
"You can ask your aunt to go with you, Cecil," he said; "and in that
case you'll have the use of her maid, if you don't care about taking
one of your own. Suppose we say Ryde; that's as nice a place as you can
go to. I'll run across and take lodgings for you, and I'll get you a
basket-chaise and a stout pony, that you can drive about the island to
your heart's content. I want to see the sweet wild-rose tint come back
to your cheeks, darling. You've been looking very pale lately."
It was not often that the speech of Laurence O'Boyneville the husband
assimilated so nearly to that of Laurence O'Boyneville the lover, and
Cecil rewarded him with a grateful smile.
"You are very kind, Laurence," she said; "but I know my aunt has made
all manner of arrangements for the autumn and winter. She told me a few
days ago that she has not a week disengaged. And I really don't care at
all about going to the sea-side. I would just as soon remain in town
while you are away."
"My darling girl," exclaimed the barrister, "if you stay in London all
the summer you'll be ill."
But again and again Lady Cecil protested that she would be contented to
spend her summer in Bloomsbury. If she could have gone to some quiet
sea-coast village alone, with no companions except her books and music,
she would have been very well pleased to escape from the wilderness
of streets and squares. But a two-months' sojourn at a fashionable
watering-place with a vivacious matron was something more than Cecil
felt herself able to endure; and Mr. O'Boyneville seemed to take it for
granted that his young wife must be protected by a chaperon when she
left his sheltering wing.
"If you _won't_ go to the sea-side," he said, "you might at least spend
a few weeks with the Mountjoys. I know they'd be delighted to have you."
"But indeed, Laurence, I shall be happier at home," Cecil pleaded; "I
had so much visiting in country-houses, you know, before our marriage."
The barrister shrugged his shoulders. He had no leisure for further
argument. His circuit work was very heavy, and his brain was already
occupied by the claims and the counterclaims of Snooks _versus_ Jones;
of Simpkins against the Mayor and Corporation of Guzzleton (involving
knotty questions under the Lands Clauses Consolidation Act); an action
for nuisance by Tittlebat against The Cesspool-Utilising Association,
for allowing their reservoirs to drain into his fishponds; and by a
variety of other cases in which sundry crooked and troublesome bits
of evidence were, with the aid of his juniors, to be made smooth and
straight for the benefit of those provincial litigants and delinquents
whose rights, wrongs, interests, and defences had been intrusted
to the popular O'Boyneville. Thus, in this, as in all other cases,
the claims of business were stronger than the call of marital duty.
Cecil had her own way, and spent the long July afternoons alone in
the Brunswick-Square drawing-room, while her husband won fame and
money abroad, and courted the laughter of hawbucks and clodhoppers in
stifling provincial town-halls and courthouses.
But before Laurence O'Boyneville departed for his circuit-duties an
event occurred which was to exercise an evil influence on Cecil's
lonely reveries during those long summer days, those solitary evenings
spent in the dim twilight of a dreary chamber.
Before winging her way to a Sussex manor-house, in which she was to
begin her autumn round of visits, Mrs MacClaverhouse came to take a
farewell dinner in Brunswick Square. Some unwonted trepidation, some
touch of unusual tenderness in the dowager's manner, impressed Cecil in
the first few moments of that lady's arrival; but on asking her aunt
if any thing was amiss, any direct reply to her question was artfully
evaded by the dowager, who became suddenly interested in the state of
Mr. O'Boyneville's health.
Before Cecil could repeat her inquiry, the barrister made his
appearance, accompanied by another legal celebrity, whose cheering
presence often illumined the dulness of Brunswick Square. Mr.
O'Boyneville welcomed the dowager with his accustomed cordiality,
and made an especial descent to the cellar to procure a particular
brand of sparkling Moselle for that lady's consumption. The two legal
celebrities made some faint pretence of general conversation while the
soup was on the table; but with the appearance of the fish plunged at
once into a discussion of the numerous points, which bristled over the
celebrated case of Blunderbuss against Saddlebags, lately decided in
the Court of Exchequer; and then, by an easy transition, they floated
into a debate upon the arguments of the respondent's counsel in that
interesting appeal before the Lords-Justices. On ordinary occasions the
dowager--who was always well posted in her _Times_--was apt to join in
these legal disquisitions, and would give her opinion with sprightly
intelligence and feminine decisiveness. But to-day Mrs. MacClaverhouse
was evidently preoccupied. She allowed the gentlemen to express their
sentiments without interruption or contradiction from her, and forgot
to compliment Mr. O'Boyneville on the delicate aroma of his Moselle, or
to whisper any little reproving speech to Cecil regarding the wasteful
character of the banquet.
The dusk was deepening when the ladies went up stairs to the
drawing-room; but when the barrister's inestimable man-of-all-work
would have lighted the candles, Mrs. MacClaverhouse entreated that the
operation might be postponed.
"I know you like mooning in the dark, Cecil," exclaimed the dowager,
with some of her native sharpness, "and for once in a way I feel
inclined for this half-light.--Come in half an hour, Pupkin; that will
be plenty of time for the candles.--There's light enough for you to
play to me, I suppose, Cecil?"
"Quite enough, dear aunt. Would you like me to play?"
"Yes, most decidedly. It's a treat to hear a decent piano after
that old rattle-trap of mine. And your Broadwood is a magnificent
instrument--something like a present from a husband. Ah, what a husband
yours is, Cecil!" exclaimed the dowager, with sudden enthusiasm; "and
I dare say you think no more of him than if he was one of those men
with red-hot pokers and hob-nailed boots that one reads of in the
police-reports."
"But, auntie, I am very grateful----"
"Grateful!" cried Mrs. MacClaverhouse, impatiently; "gratitude has
nothing to do with it. I tell you, child, you are utterly incapable of
appreciating Laurence O'Boyneville."
Cecil had seated herself at the piano by this time. Her fingers
wandered absently over the keys, and her head was bent in a pensive
attitude. Mrs. MacClaverhouse watched her niece sharply as she bent
over the instrument. The slender figure draped in white looked very
fragile and phantom-like in the dusk.
"What would you like me to play, auntie?" Cecil asked presently.
"Oh, let me have one of your favourite reveries: your 'Gondola,'
or your 'Femme du Marin,' or your 'Source,' or some of that dreamy
nonsense you are so fond of. Play something of Mendelssohn's, if you
like--those doleful 'Songs without Words'--funeral dirges without the
funeral, _I_ should call them--which you were so fond of playing to
Hector at Fortinbras."
Watching the frail white figure relentlessly athwart the dusk, Mrs.
MacClaverhouse perceived a faint shiver disturb its repose as she said
this. But in the next moment Cecil struck a few chords and began to
play. Her aunt rose from the chair in which she had seated herself, and
came nearer the piano.
Cecil's music to-night was of the softest and tenderest character.
Her fingers glided over the keys in a dreamy _legato_ movement, and
as the dowager watched and listened, two actual tears arose in those
sharp worldly eyes, and blotted the picture of the slender white-robed
figure, and graceful drooping head.
While Cecil was lingering fondly over a _piano_ passage, the dowager
startled her by a profound sigh. Any thing in the way of sentiment
was so foreign to the habits of Mrs. MacClaverhouse's mind that Cecil
looked up from her piano in unmitigated surprise.
"Ah, by-the-bye," said the dowager, "talking of Hector Gordon, I had
some news from India to-day."
"Indeed, auntie!"
The same faint shiver that had stirred the white-robed figure before
stirred it again. There are some things that can never be forgotten.
"Yes, I had a letter _viâ_ Marseilles. Of course, when people are
wallowing in gold they have no occasion to think of sixpence more or
less for postage. _My_ letters have to go by Southampton. Bad news, of
course, Cecil; who ever receives good news nowadays? I shall have to
go into mourning; poor people's relations are always dying. I am really
almost inclined to think they do it on purpose to involve one in the
expense of mourning."
Cecil's heart gave a great leap, and then, seemed to stand still. The
human heart has a faculty of transforming itself into a lump of ice at
such moments.
"What do you mean?" she cried, with a vehemence that startled the
dowager; "is Hector Gordon dead?"
She rose from before the piano, trembling from head to foot. Mrs.
MacClaverhouse caught her niece in her arms.
"My darling!" she exclaimed,--and perhaps it was the first time in
her life that the strong-minded matron had ever employed so tender
an epithet,--"do you think I should talk so coolly about going into
mourning for my boy?--who has been more than a son to me, bless his
generous heart. Don't tremble so, Cecil; it is Hector's wife, poor
young thing, who is dead."
"You--you frightened me, auntie," murmured Cecil, as she sank
helplessly into the chair from which she had risen in her sudden
terror. "You know how little Hector Gordon and I have ever been to each
other--what utter strangers we are and must always be to one another
now. But to be told all at once, that a person you have known and been
familiar with is dead, the shock--the----"
The words died on her lips. The sudden terror that had taken
possession of her had given place to a new fear. She was alarmed by the
intensity of her own feelings.
"If he were really dead," she thought, "what right should I have to
feel like that?"
She recovered herself with an effort, and after a brief pause addressed
the agitated dowager very calmly.
"Tell me all about it, auntie," she said; "it is very shocking--so
young--so happy."
In the moment after having said these words, a pang of envy shot
through Cecil's heart. Ah, what an enviable fate it seemed, this
destiny which commonplace people are so apt to bemoan! To have one
brief year of perfect bliss, and then to die; to live the life of the
roses and butterflies; to be indeed the favoured of the gods.
"It seems there was a baby," said Mrs. MacClaverhouse, "though _I_
had not been told there was any thing of that sort expected; and of
course, if the poor child had lived, they would have looked for their
godmothers elsewhere. The infant was a son, and Hector was delighted,
and every body else was delighted. But things took a bad turn; the baby
died, and the poor young mother fretted, and then there came a fever,
and in three weeks' time my poor boy was a widower. I have had no
letter from him yet, but they tell me he is dreadfully broken-hearted."
"It is very dreadful for him," murmured Cecil.
"And worse for her, I should think, poor thing," said the
matter-of-fact dowager.
"I tell you, my dear Sir, if Bamper goes in for specific performance of
contract, the defendant hasn't a leg to stand on," said the sonorous
voice of Mr. O'Boyneville, who entered the room at this moment in hot
argument with his friend. "Good gracious me, Mrs. Mac.!" he exclaimed,
on entering the dusky chamber, "how is it they have left you in the
dark all this time?--Cecil, what have you been thinking of? Where's
that fellow Pupkin?"
The valuable Pupkin appeared with lights at this moment. The
barrister's powerful will vanquished his household as it conquered all
other opponents. The man-of-all-work had entered his service ten years
before, a rough and unkempt lad, with no ideas beyond blacking-brushes
and a knifeboard, to become in due time the very pink and model of
indoor domestics.
Pupkin placed a moderator-lamp on the centre table, and lighted candles
on the cheffonier and mantelpiece. He brought the tea-equipage, and
attended on his mistress while she poured out the tea. Mr. O'Boyneville
relapsed into profound meditation, as it was his habit to do while
taking tea. He was thinking fondly of the red bag which was waiting
for him on the study-table below, and wishing that his brother luminary
might be inspired to take his departure. But that gentleman was pleased
to snatch an opportunity of making himself agreeable to his learned
friend's aristocratic and elegant young wife, and was relating a
facetious but strictly correct trial, which had convulsed one of the
law-courts during the late term. Poor Cecil smiled faintly at the
feeble witticisms, and tried her uttermost to be civil to her husband's
guest. But she was very glad when Mr. O'Boyneville, after a protracted
fit of staring, which was the next thing to epilepsy, started suddenly
from his seat, and exclaimed:
"And now, my dear Sleghammer, I'll wish you good-night. I've got some
very important papers to look through before I go to bed, and----"
"My dear Boyneville, don't use the least ceremony. I know how you work!
and, bless my soul! it's past ten o'clock. But really I had spent
such a delightful evening, that, upon my word, I----" murmured Mr.
Sleghammer, looking at Lady Cecil, whose society he had enjoyed for
about twenty minutes since dinner.
When Mr. O'Boyneville's guest had walked away in the summer night, and
when Mr. O'Boyneville had gone to his nightly labours, the dowager
embraced her niece very affectionately before taking her departure in
the phantom chariot, which had been prowling slowly to and fro in the
square for the last half hour, to the admiration of the boys of the
district who associated the equipage vaguely with the Lord Mayor.
"What a dear creature your husband is!" cried the dowager; "and how
entertaining it is to hear all the little secrets of the law-courts!
You ought to be happy, Cecil; you ought indeed. But you girls don't
know what real happiness is. And yet _you_ ought to know the value of a
good home, and a generous husband; for you have known what it is to be
poor."
"Do you think that I do not appreciate my husband's goodness?" said
Cecil earnestly. "Indeed--indeed, auntie----"
"Oh yes," answered the dowager promptly, "you appreciate his goodness
perhaps; but you don't appreciate _him_. You just tolerate him because
he is good and kind to you, and works like a galley-slave to insure
your welfare in the future; but if he could read 'Victor Hugo' like a
play-actor, and make an idiot of himself about Mendelssohn, you'd adore
him."
This was the last Cecil saw of her aunt for some time, for on the
morrow the dowager departed to the Sussex manor-house. Before the week
was out Mr. O'Boyneville had also taken wing, and Cecil was quite
alone in the big empty Brunswick Square mansion. She had been allowed
to have her own way. She had escaped the weariness of a sea-side
excursion--the familiar gaieties of country-house visiting. She was
alone with her books and her music, as she had wished to be. She was
alone, and she found the autumn days too long for her, the Bloomsbury
mansion too big and empty.
Mr. O'Boyneville had no idea of being an inattentive husband. He
sent his wife hasty lines scrawled on the flaps of envelopes in the
intervals of his professional labours, and the hasty lines were full
of kindness and anxiety for her welfare. But a couple of sentences
written on the flap of an envelope are not calculated to "speak the
soft intercourse from soul to soul;" and the barrister's brief scrawls
afforded his wife very little food for reflection during her lonely
hours. She wrote her husband long dutiful letters, two and three
times a week; but she found this letter-writing rather a weary labour
sometimes. What subjects were there on which she could be expansive?
She took so little interest in his professional triumphs. He cared so
little for her books and music. She shrank from putting her thoughts
into words: but one conviction was slowly and surely taking root in her
mind, and that conviction was that her marriage had been a mistake.
"He ought to have married some good comfortable creature, who would
have found occupation enough in household duties," she thought
sometimes. "I read too much, and think too much, until I begin to feel
that there is something wanting in my life."
She had never dared to acknowledge to herself that the something
wanting was a more genial companion than Laurence O'Boyneville.
"He is so good to me, and I ought to love him so dearly," she thought
in those moments of self-reproach which came very often in her lonely
days. "I know that he is good, and honourable, and clever; what more
can I wish him to be? Surely I ought to be proud of such a husband when
I remember the fate of other women. What would become of me if I had
married such a man as Mr. Lobyer?"
There is a little story by Alfred de Musset, in which the heroine
is married to a man whom she has passionately loved. She finds, too
late, that there is little sympathy between them, and her life is very
lonely. One night she is at the opera--alone, as she almost always is;
and when the music, which she adores, fills her with uncontrollable
emotion, she stretches out her hand involuntarily to clasp the
sympathetic hand of a friend. The poor little hand falls upon the arm
of an empty chair. The husband is no amateur of Mozart, and falls
asleep on those rare occasions when he accompanies his wife to the
opera.
There were times when Cecil felt a vague yearning for the touch of
that sympathetic hand; there were times when a chilling sense of
intellectual loneliness oppressed her spirits, and when she felt that
it would have been better for her if the daily cares about plate and
china, and all the little sordid duties of her Dorset-Square life, had
still demanded her thought and attention.
Did she ever think of the young widower far away in his time of
mourning? Did the picture of that which might have been arise more
vividly before her vision now that the cold hand of death had loosened
Hector Gordon's bondage? Alas! yes; struggle as she might against the
tempter, there were times when she felt herself weak, and wicked;
there were times when the face that had looked down upon her under the
sunless autumn sky looked at her again out of the shadows of her lonely
room, instinct with the same melancholy tenderness--the same passionate
devotion.
"I ought to be content to remember that for one moment in my life I
was loved like that," she thought. "I am as foolish as I am wicked
when I let his image come back to me. What could I be to him if we met
now, and I were as free as he is? Can I suppose that he remembers me,
after all the domestic sweetness of his brief married life--after the
terrible sorrow in which it has come to an end? Ah, no, thank God for
that; the past has made a gulf between us which nothing in the present
can bridge over. If we met to-morrow, we should meet as strangers. I
can almost fancy the look of indifference I should see in his face."
If Cecil was a lonely wife, she was at least not a neglected
or forgotten one. All things that can contribute to a woman's
happiness--when considered from a prosaic and common-sense point of
view--were freely furnished by Laurence O'Boyneville for the woman
he had wooed so boldly and won so easily. A dainty little brougham,
and a stout strong-built steed, had been provided for the barrister's
wife. She had a coachman renowned for his sobriety, and she had no
occasion to suffer the ignominy of opening her carriage-door, or the
martyrdom involved in the dangerous attentions of street-boys; for the
inestimable Pupkin accompanied her in her drives, and marshalled her
solemnly to her chariot after her calls or shopping. She had unlimited
supplies of new music, and first-class subscriptions at more than
one library. She had _carte blanche_ at Howell and James's, and had
she chosen to be extravagant, might have indulged her folly to the
uttermost. She had a well-appointed although somewhat dingily-furnished
house, and servants who gave her very little trouble; and if amidst
all this substantial commonplace comfort the sympathetic hand and the
congenial companionship which make the lives of some few women happy
were wanting, she had surely little right to complain. That perfect
circle which is the emblem of eternity is not to be found embodied upon
earth, and there is always some missing link in the golden chain of
sublunary bliss.
When all the brightness of summer had vanished before the pelting rains
and dull leaden skies of a stormy October, the barrister returned to
his wife and his London engagements. She was really glad to welcome
him back; even though he did seem a little bigger and louder, and more
overpowering altogether, now that she had been separated from him for
some months. Business of a special nature had kept him away from home
after his circuit-work had been finished, and it was not till the
middle of October that he was free to return. He came back to the old
round of perpetual labour, and his work in the ensuing term threatened
to be even heavier than usual; but he had time to see that his wife was
looking pale and ill, and the discovery grieved and distressed him.
"I did wrong in letting you have your own way, Cecil," he said; "this
autumn in London has done you harm. You are looking pale and ill. If
you'll tell Pupkin to put a couple of shirts in my portmanteau, I'll
take you down to Brighton to-morrow afternoon by the five o'clock
express."
It was in vain that Cecil protested that there was no occasion for
Mr. O'Boyneville to put himself out of the way on her account. The
barrister insisted on the visit to Brighton; and on the following
day, which was the last of the week, and the only one on which Mr.
O'Boyneville could have turned his back upon the neighbourhood of the
law-courts, Cecil found herself whirled seawards through the evening
fog by the most delightful express-train in Christendom. The cool
sea-breezes blew into her chamber at the Albion, and she saw the lights
of the chain-pier burning brightly below her window as she arranged her
hair before the glass. She found her husband comfortably established
before a blazing fire in the sitting-room when she went down stairs;
and in less than half an hour a little _chef-d'œuvre_ in the way of
dinners was served by the gravest and most attentive of waiters. After
dinner Mr. O'Boyneville enjoyed his accustomed nap; while Cecil stood
at the window, looking out at the moonlit sky and sea. Ah, who shall
say what a treat the sea is after Brunswick Square--what refreshment to
the eye in these big rolling waves--what music in the sonorous roar of
the sea after the fifes and drums of the Foundling!
After tea Mr. O'Boyneville looked at his watch, and then rang for the
waiter.
"I expect a parcel by the 9.45 train," he said. "Will you be good
enough to inquire about it; and let me have a pair of candles on that
table?"
The waiter bowed and departed. He returned in ten minutes, carrying a
bundle, at which Cecil gazed wonderingly.
It was the barrister's crimson bag.
"My work follows me, you see, Cecil," said Mr. O'Boyneville. "I was
anxious about to-night's letters and papers; so I told Jarvis to send
the bag after me."
The attentive waiter placed candles on the side-table; and the great
O'Boyneville seated himself before his papers. He worked indefatigably
for the remainder of the evening. Cecil heard the stiff law-stationer's
paper crackle as the barrister read his briefs, only pausing now and
then to scrawl some note upon the margin, or to meditate profoundly,
with a thoughtful scowl upon his face. She had no books with her; so
she drew back the curtain from before the window that commanded the
sea, and sat by it, looking out at the moonlit waves and the lamps
of the cliff and pier; and but for the roaring of the sea and the
moonlight on the waters, Brighton would have been as dull as Bloomsbury.
On Sunday afternoon Mr. O'Boyneville drove his wife up and down the
cliff in the clear cold October weather. He recognised several of his
brother luminaries, who were taking the air on the King's Road, all
more or less thoughtful and preoccupied of aspect, and all meditating
Smith _versus_ Brown, or Jones _versus_ Robinson, or some other cases
in which their rhetorical abilities were to be displayed. The barrister
entertained his wife by pointing out these distinguished individuals.
"Do you see that tall stout man, Cecil? No, not that one; the man
nearest the lamp-post--the man who is blowing his nose? That's Bobbin,
the great chancery-barrister--the man who----"
And then, when Cecil had confronted the east wind, and strained her
eyes to the uttermost, and ultimately had gazed reverentially on the
wrong person, Mr. O'Boyneville went on to sing the praises of Bobbin;
and a quarter of an hour afterwards poor Cecil had to twist her head in
all manner of unpleasant positions, in order to behold a man in grey
trousers and a brown overcoat, who turned out to be no other than the
mighty Valentine, but who in outward aspect differed in no essential
way from other men.
Lady Cecil was not interested in Bobbin or Valentine. If Laurence
O'Boyneville could have shown her Victor Hugo or Alfred Tennyson
taking their constitutional on that pleasant sea-shore, she would have
thought it no trouble to twist her head or strain her eyes in order to
look upon them; though even then there is some probability that she
would have been disappointed in the mortal habitations of those mighty
souls. Was not Lavater disappointed in Goethe, and almost inclined to
disbelieve that the handsome young stranger presented to him was indeed
the author of _Werter_?
After the conventional drive up and down the King's Road, Mr.
O'Boyneville took his wife into bleak solitudes beyond Rottendean.
They drove between bare hills, through a bit of lonely country,
where there were little homesteads scattered far apart, with lights
twinkling feebly in the twilight--a lonely barren bit of country, whose
atmosphere on an October afternoon has a soothing influence on the
mind. The dim grey downs, and the sheep feeding high up in the clear
air, seem so very far away from all London care and turmoil.
Both the barrister and his wife abandoned themselves to a contemplative
mood during the long country drive; but after dinner they talked very
pleasantly by the cheery fire, and Laurence forgot his red bag for once
in a way, and became the man he had been during the brief holiday-time
before his marriage--not very sentimental or metaphysical, but an
agreeable companion nevertheless.
"I think the holiday has done us both good," he said to his wife, as
an early express bore them away from Brighton on Monday morning. Mr.
O'Boyneville had persuaded Cecil to stay a few days longer at the
Albion, promising to return and fetch her; but she did not care to stay
at Brighton alone, with neither books nor music.
"I wish we could oftener be away from Brunswick Square and your
professional work, Laurence," she said, with her hand in her husband's
big palm. She felt drawn nearer to him by that one day's holiday than
by all the domestic routine of their Bloomsbury life.
"Ah, my dear, that isn't possible," said the barrister, with a sigh of
resignation.
Had the great O'Boyneville's fate been in his own hands, would he
have had his professional labour less, his leisure for home-duties
and home-pleasures greater? Alas! it is very much to be feared that
he would not have so chosen. He was but mortal man; and the triumphs
of the law-courts, the compliments from the bench, and the "roars of
laughter" reported in the newspapers, are very sweet to the forensic
mind.
A fortnight after the Brighton excursion there came a letter from
Flo--a letter the contents of which Mr. O'Boyneville, who was
sufficiently inquisitive upon occasions, begged to hear. As Mrs.
Lobyer's epistle, though intensely affectionate, was by no means
confidential, Cecil complied with her husband's request. The letter
announced Mr. and Mrs. Lobyer's return from the Continent, and
establishment at Pevenshall; and the writer entreated her dearest
Cecil, and her dearest Cecil's husband, if possible, to spend Christmas
at that country mansion.
"You like Mrs. Lobyer, don't you, Cecil?" the barrister asked, when the
perusal of the letter was finished.
"Oh yes, I like her very much indeed."
"Then why shouldn't you accept her invitation?"
"But can you go, Laurence?"
"Well, I rather fear not. I might run down for Christmas-day perhaps,
and a few days after, while the courts are up; but that would all
depend upon circumstances. In any case you ought to go, Cecil; the
change of air and scene will do you good: you've not been looking well
since my return from circuit."
There was some discussion. Cecil did not care for gaiety; Cecil did not
wish to leave her husband at Christmas time; but the barrister's strong
will triumphed.
"I let you have your own way in the summer, and I found you looking
as pale as a ghost when I came home. You must let me have my way this
time, Cecil," he said decisively.
So it was decided that Lady Cecil should accept Mrs. Lobyer's
invitation, and should go to Pevenshall on the fifteenth of December,
where Mr. O'Boyneville would join her, if possible, during the
Christmas week.
A few days before she left Brunswick Square Cecil received a voluminous
epistle from the dowager, who retailed all the gossip of the house
in which she was staying for her niece's amusement, and furnished
the barrister's wife with a brief chronicle of births, deaths, and
marriages, pending or otherwise.
The letter was written closely on two sheets of paper, both crossed,
and in an obscure corner Cecil found a postscript.
"I have heard from Hector Gordon. His regiment is ordered home, and he
comes with it. Indeed, for all I know, he is in England at this moment."
"He is as far away from me in England as he was in India," Cecil
thought, as she folded the missive. "My aunt must know that he and I
would never wish to meet, and hers is the only house in which I should
be likely to see him."
She showed Mr. O'Boyneville her aunt's letter; and even the obscure
little postscript did not escape the searching eye of the barrister. He
asked who the Hector Gordon was who was expected home; and Cecil had to
explain her aunt's relationship to the Plunger captain, and to tell
the story of the young man's marriage and widowhood, for her husband's
edification.