AT THE LILACS.
Nullington was a sleepy little town, standing a mile, or more, from
Heron Dyke, and boasted of some seven or eight thousand inhabitants.
The extension of the railway to Nullington was supposed to have made a
considerable addition to its liveliness and bustle: but that could
only be appreciated by those who remembered a still more sleepy state
of affairs, when the nearest railway station was twenty miles away,
and when the Mermaid coach seemed one of those institutions which must
of necessity last for ever.
Nullington stood inland. Of late years a sort of suburb to the old
town had sprung up with mushroom rapidity on the verge of the low
sandy cliffs that overlooked the sea, to which the name of New
Nullington had been given. Already New Nullington possessed terraces
of lodging-houses, built to suit the requirements of visitors, and
some good houses were springing up year by year. Several well-to-do
families, who liked "the strong sweet air of the North Sea," had taken
up their residence there _en permanence_.
It was a pleasant walk from New Nullington along the footpath by the
edge of the cliff, with the wheat-fields on one hand and the sea on
the other. When you reached the lighthouse, the cliff began to fall
away till it became merged in great reaches of shifting sand, which
stretched southward as far as the eye could reach. Here, at the
junction of cliff and sand, was the lifeboat station, while a few
hundred yards inland, and partly sheltered from the colder winds by
the sloping shoulder of the cliff, stood the little hamlet of
Easterby. A few fishermen's cottages, a few labourers' huts--and they
were little better than huts--an alehouse or two, a quaint old church
which a congregation of fifty people sufficed to fill, and a few
better-class houses scattered here and there, made up the whole of
Easterby.
Easterby and New Nullington might be taken as the two points of the
base of a triangle, with the sea for their background, of which the
old town formed the apex. The distance of the latter was very nearly
the same from both places. About half-way between Easterby and the old
town of Nullington, you came to the lodge which gave access to the
grounds and Hall of Heron Dyke.
On the other side of Nullington, on the London road, stood Homedale, a
pretty modern-built villa, standing in its own grounds, the residence
of Lady Cleeve and her son Philip.
Lady Cleeve had not married until late in life, and Philip was her
only child. She had been the second wife of Sir Gunton Cleeve, a
baronet of good family but impoverished means. There was a son by the
first marriage, who had inherited the title and such small amount of
property as came to him by entail. The present Sir Gunton was in
the diplomatic service at one of the foreign courts. He and his
step-mother were on very good terms. Now and then he wrote her a
cheery little note of a dozen lines, and at odd times there came a
little present from him, just a token of remembrance, which was as
much as could be expected from so poor a man.
Lady Cleeve had brought her husband fifteen thousand pounds in all,
the half of which only was settled on herself; and her present income
was but three hundred and fifty pounds a year. The house, however, was
her own. She kept two women-servants, and lived of necessity a plain
and unostentatious life; saving ever where she could for Philip's
sake. That young gentleman, now two-and-twenty years old, was not yet
in a position to earn a guinea for himself; though it was needful that
he should dress-well and have money to spend, for was he not the
second son of Sir Gunton Cleeve?
For the last two years Philip had been in the office of Mr. Tiplady,
the one architect of whom Nullington could boast, and who really had
an extensive and high-class practice. Mr. Tiplady had known and
respected Lady Cleeve for a great number of years; and, being quite
cognisant of her limited means, he had agreed to take Philip for a
very small premium, but as yet did not pay him any salary. The opening
was not an unpromising one, there being some prospect that Philip
might one day succeed to the business, for the architect had neither
chick nor child.
Another prospect was also in store for Philip--that he should marry
Maria Kettle. The Vicar and Lady Cleeve, old and firm friends, had
somehow come to a tacit notion upon the point years ago, when the
children were playfellows together; and Philip and Maria understood it
perfectly--that they were some day to make a match of it. It was not
distasteful to either of them. Philip thought himself in love with
Maria; perhaps he was so after a fashion; and there could be little
doubt that Maria loved Philip with all her heart. And though she could
not see her way clear to leave the parish as long as her father was
vicar of it, she did admit to herself in a half-conscious way that if,
in the far, very far-off future, she could be brought to change her
condition, it would be for the sake of Philip Cleeve.
Midway between the old town and the new one, was The Lilacs, the
pretty cottage ornée of which Captain Lennox and his sister, Mrs.
Ducie, were the present tenants. The cottage was painted a creamy
white, and had a verandah covered with trailing plants running round
three sides of it. It was shut in from the high-road by a thick
privet-hedge and several clumps of tall evergreens. Flower-borders
surrounded the house, in which was shown the perfection of
ribbon-gardening, and the well-kept lawn was big enough for Badminton
or lawn-tennis. There was no view from the cottage beyond its own
grounds. It lay rather low, and was perhaps a little too much shut in
by trees and greenery: all the same, it was a charming little place.
Here, on a certain evening in September, for the weeks have gone on, a
pleasant little party had met to dine. There was the host, Captain
Lennox. After him came Lord Camberley, a great magnate of the
neighbourhood. The third was our old acquaintance, Mr. Bootle, with
his eye-glass and his little fluffy moustache. Last of all came
handsome Philip Cleeve, with his brown curly hair and his ever-ready
smile. The only lady present was Mrs. Ducie.
Teddy Bootle had run down on a short visit to Nullington, as he often
did. He and Philip had found Captain Lennox and Lord Camberley in the
billiard-room of the Rose and Crown Hotel--Master Philip being too
fond of idling away his hours, and just now it was a very slack time
at the office. Lennox at once introduced Mr. Bootle to his lordship,
and he condescended to be gracious to the little man, whose income was
popularly supposed to be of fabulous extent. Philip he knew to nod to;
but the two were not much acquainted. The Captain proposed that they
should all go home and dine with him at The Lilacs, and he at once
scribbled a note to his sister, Mrs. Ducie, that she might be prepared
for their arrival.
Lord Camberley was a good-looking, slim-built, dark-complexioned man
of eight-and-twenty. He had a small black moustache, his hair was
cropped very short, and he was fond of sport as connected with the
racecourse. By his father's death a few months ago he had come into a
fortune of nine thousand a year. He lived, when in the country, at
Camberley Park, a grand old Elizabethan mansion about five miles from
Nullington, where his aunt, the Honourable Mrs. Featherstone, kept
house for him.
It was at the billiard-table that he and Lennox had first met. A
billiard-table is like a sea voyage: it brings people together for a
short time on a sort of common level, and acquaintanceships spring up
which under other circumstances would never have had an existence. The
advantage is that you can drop them again when the game is over, or
the voyage at an end: though people do not always care to do that. In
the dull little town of Nullington the occasional society of a man
like Captain Lennox seemed to Lord Camberley an acquisition not to be
despised. They had many tastes and sympathies in common. The Captain
was always well posted up in the state of the odds; in fact, he made a
little book of his own on most of the big events of the year. There
were few better judges of the points of a horse or a dog than he. Then
he could be familiar without being presuming: Lord Camberley, who
never forgot that he was a lord, hated people who presumed. Lennox, in
fact, was a "deuced nice fellow," as he more than once told his aunt.
Meanwhile he cultivated his society a good deal: he could always drop
him when he grew tired of him, and it was his lordship's way to grow
tired of everybody before long.
Five minutes after they had assembled Margaret Ducie entered the room.
Lord Camberley had seen her several times previously, but to Bootle
and Philip she was a stranger. Her brother introduced them. There was
perhaps a shade more cordiality in the greeting she accorded to Bootle
than in the one she vouchsafed to Philip. Camberley, the cynical, who
was looking on, and who prided himself, with or without cause, on his
knowledge of the sex, muttered under his breath, "She knows already
which is the rich man and which the poor clerk. Lennox must have put
her up to that."
Mrs. Ducie was a brunette. She had a great quantity of jet-black silky
hair, and large black liquid eyes. Her nose was thin, high-bred, and
aquiline, and she rarely spoke without smiling. Her figure was tall
and somewhat meagre in its outlines; but whether she sat, or stood, or
walked, every movement and every pose was instinct with a sort of
picturesque and unstudied grace. She dressed very quietly, and when
abroad her almost invariable wear was a gown of some plain black
material. But about that simple garment there was a style, a fit, a
suspicion of something in cut or trimming, in the elaboration of a
flounce here or the addition of a furbelow there, that to the
observant mind hinted at the latest Parisian audacity, and of secrets
which as yet were scarcely whispered beyond Mayfair. The ladies of
Nullington and its neighbourhood could only envy and admire, and
imitate afar off.
Mrs. Ducie was one of those women whose age it is next to impossible
to guess correctly. "She's thirty if she's a day," Lord Camberley had
said to himself, within five minutes of his introduction to her. "She
can't possibly be more than three-and-twenty," was Philip Cleeve's
verdict to-day. The truth, in all probability, lay somewhere between
the two.
Whatever her age might be, Lord Camberley had a great admiration for
Mrs. Ducie, but it was after a fashion of his own. He was thoroughly
artificial himself, and rustic beauty, or simplicity eating bread and
butter in a white frock, had no charms for him. He liked a woman who
had seen and studied the world of "men and manners;" and that Mrs.
Ducie had travelled much, and seen many phases of life, he was
beginning by this time to discover. He was on his guard when he first
made her acquaintance, lest he might be walking into a matrimonial
trap, artfully baited by herself and her brother; for Lord Camberley
was a mark for anxious mothers and daughters: not but that he felt
himself quite capable of looking after his own interests on that
point. Still, however wide-awake a man may believe himself to be, it
is always best to be wary in this crafty world; and very wary he was
the first three or four times he visited The Lilacs. He was not long,
however, in perceiving that, whatever matrimonial designs Margaret
Ducie might or might not have elsewhere, she was without any as far as
he was concerned; and from that time he felt at ease in the cottage.
Captain Lennox's little dinners were thoroughly French in style and
cookery. They were good without being over-elaborate. Camberley's
idea was that the pretty widow, despite her white and delicate hands,
was oftener in the kitchen than most people imagined. When dinner was
over, the gentlemen adjourned to the verandah to smoke their cigars
and sip their coffee; while in the drawing-room, the French windows of
which were open to the garden lighted only by one shaded lamp,
Margaret sat and played in a minor key such softly languishing airs,
chiefly from the old masters, as accorded well with the September
twilight and the _far niente_ feeling induced by a choice dinner.
Philip Cleeve felt like a man who dreams and is yet awake. Never
before had he been in the company of a woman like Mrs. Ducie. There
was a seductive witchery about her such as he had no previous
knowledge of. It was not that she took more notice of him than of
anyone else--it maybe that she took less; but he fell under the
influence of that subtle magnetism, so difficult to define, and yet so
very evil in its effects, which some women exercise over some men,
perhaps without any wish or intention on their part of doing so. In
the case of Philip it was a sort of mental intoxication, delicious and
yet with a hidden pain in it, and with a vague underlying sense of
unrest and dissatisfaction for which he was altogether unable to
account.
After a time somebody proposed cards--probably it was Camberley--and
as no one objected, they all went indoors.
"What are we going to play?--whist?" queried Lennox, while the servant
was arranging the table.
"Nothing so slow as whist, I hope," said his lordship. "A quiet hand
at 'Nap' would be more to my taste."
"How say you, gentlemen? I suppose we all play that vulgar but
fascinating game?" said the Captain.
"I know a little of it," answered Bootle.
"I have only played it once," said Philip.
"If you have played once, it's as good as having played it a thousand
times," said Camberley, dogmatically. "I'm not over-brilliant at cards
myself, but I picked up Napoleon in ten minutes."
"Shilling points, I suppose?" said Lennox.
Camberley shrugged his shoulders, but said nothing, and they all sat
down.
There was an arched recess in the room, fitted with an ottoman. It was
Mrs. Ducie's favourite seat. Here she sat now, engaged on some piece
of delicate embroidery, looking on, and smiling, and giving utterance
to an occasional word or two between the deals, but not interrupting
them.
Philip Cleeve, notwithstanding that he was less conversant with the
game than his companions, and that the black eyes of Mrs. Ducie would
persist in coming between him and his cards--he could see her from
where he sat almost without a turn of his head--was very fortunate in
the early part of the evening, carrying all before him. He found
himself, at the end of an hour and a half's play, a winner of close on
three sovereigns, which to a narrow pocket seems a considerable sum.
"This is too sleepy!" cried Camberley at last. "Can't we pile up the
agony a bit, eh, Lennox?"
"I'm in your hands," said the Captain.
"What say you, Mr. Bootle?" queried his lordship. "Shall we turn our
shillings into half-crowns? That will afford a little more excitement,
eh?"
"Then a little more excitement let us have by all means," answered
good-natured Freddy, who cared not whether he lost or won.
But now Philip's luck seemed at once to desert him. What with the
extra wine he had taken, and the glamour cast over him by the
proximity of Mrs. Ducie, his judgment became entirely at fault. In
half an hour he had lost back the whole of his winnings; a little
later still, his pockets were empty. It is true he only had two
sovereigns about him at starting, so that his loss was not a heavy
one; but it was quite heavy enough for him. He was hesitating what he
should do next--whether borrow of Bootle or Lennox--when all at once
he remembered that he had money about him. In the course of the day he
had collected an account amounting to twenty pounds, due to Mr.
Tiplady, and it was still in his possession. He felt relieved at once.
There was a chance of winning back what he had lost. With a hand that
shook a little he poured out some wine and water at the side-table,
and then sat down to resume his play.
When the clock on the chimney-piece chimed eleven, Lord Camberley
threw down his cards, saying he would play no more, and Philip Cleeve
found himself with a solitary half-sovereign left in his pocket.
He got up, feeling stunned and giddy, and stepped out through the
French window into the verandah. Here he was presently joined by the
rest. Lennox thrust a cigar into his hand, and they all lighted up.
The night was sultry; but after the warmth of the drawing-room such
fresh air as there was seemed welcome to all of them. They went slowly
down the main walk of the garden towards the little fish-pond at the
end, Camberley and Mrs. Ducie, for she had strolled out too, being a
little behind the others.
"I am going to drive my drag to the Agricultural Show at Norwich next
Tuesday," said his lordship to her. "Lennox has promised to go. May I
hope that you will honour me with your company on the box seat on the
occasion?"
"Who is going beside yourself and Ferdinand?" she asked.
"Captain Maudesley, and Pierpoint. Sir John Fenn will probably pack
himself inside with his gout."
"But the other ladies--who are they?"
"Um--well, to tell you the truth, I had not thought about asking any
other lady."
"Ah! Then, I'm not sure that I should care to go with you, Lord
Camberley. Five gentlemen and one lady--that would never do."
"Let me beg of you to reconsider----"
"Pray do nothing of the kind. I would rather not."
"I am awfully sorry," said his lordship, in something of a huff.
"Confound this cigar! And confound such old-fashioned prudish
notions!" he added to himself. "I'd not have thought it of her."
She walked back, after saying a pleasant word or two, and fell into
conversation with Philip Cleeve. He seemed distrait. She thought he
had taken enough champagne, and felt rather sorry for the young
fellow.
"Do you never feel dull, Mrs. Ducie," he asked, "now that you have
come to live among the sand-hills?"
"Oh no. The people I have been introduced to here are all very nice
and kind; and then I have my ponies, you know; and there's my music,
and my box from Mudie's once a month; so that I have not much time for
ennui. My tastes are neither very æsthetic nor very elevated, Mr.
Cleeve."
"They are at least agreeable ones," answered Philip.
As Philip Cleeve walked home a war of feelings was at work within him,
such as he had never experienced before. On the one hand there was the
loss of Mr. Tiplady's twenty pounds; which must be made good tomorrow
morning. He turned hot and cold when he thought of what he had done.
He knew it was wrong, dishonourable--what you will. How he came to do
it he could not tell--just as we all say when the apple's eaten and
only the bitter taste left. He must ask his mother to make good the
loss; but it would never do to tell her the real facts of the case. He
should not like her to think him dishonourable--and she was not well,
and it would vex her terribly. He must go to her with some sort of
excuse--a poor one would do, so utterly unsuspicious was she. This was
humiliation indeed. He was almost ready to take a vow never to touch a
card again. Almost; but not quite.
On the other hand, his thoughts would fly off to Margaret Ducie and
her thousand nameless witcheries. There was quite a wild fever in his
blood when he dwelt on her. It seemed a month since he had last seen
and spoken with Maria Kettle--Maria, that sweet, pale abstraction, who
seemed to him to-night so unsubstantial and far away. But he did not
want to think of her just now. He wanted to forget that he was engaged
to her, or as good as engaged. Though some innate voice of conscience
whispered that, if he valued his own peace of mind, it would be well
for him to keep out of the way of the beautiful ignis fatuus which had
shone on his path to-night for the first time.