It had begun to snow by the time Jeffray had left Pevensel Forest for
the meadow-lands and brown fallows that spoke of civilization. Dusk had
fallen, the whirling snow-flakes dimming the red glow in the west, yet
filling the twilight with a gray radiance. Richard saw the lights of
Rodenham village glimmering faintly in the valley below him. Soon he was
riding through his own park with the thickening snow driving like mist
amid the trees.
Jeffray left his mare at the stables and entered the house by the side
door from the garden. The old priory of Rodenham was one of those
dream-houses that seem built up out of the idyls of the past. It was
full of long galleries, dark entries, beams, recessed windows, huge
cupboards, and winding stairs. Casements glimmered in unexpected places.
The rooms led one into the other at all angles, and were rarely on a
level. Here were panels black with age, phantasmal beds, carved chests
that might have tombed mysteries for centuries, faded tapestries that
breathed forth tragedy as they waved upon the walls. All was dark,
mellow, stately, silent. The very essences of life seemed to have melted
into the stones; the deep throes of the human heart had become as echoes
in each solemn room.
Jeffray found the Lady Letitia, his aunt, playing piquet in the damask
drawing-room with Dr. Sugg, the rector of Rodenham. The Lady Letitia was
a red-beaked and bushy browed old vulture, with wicked eyes and a
budding beard. Her towering “head” was stuffed full of ribbons and
feathers, her stupendous hoop of red damask, her gown flowered red and
blue. The Lady Letitia was one of those preposterous old ladies who
labor under the delusion that a woman of sixty may still presume to
trade upon the reputation of impudent loveliness she had created some
thirty years ago. Everything about the Lady Letitia was false and
artificial. Her teeth and eyebrows were emblems of what her virtues
were, manufactured articles to make the wearer passable in society. The
old lady had deigned to drive down from London in her coach-and-four to
spend Christmas with her nephew, a piece of affectionate economy
necessitated by heavy losses at cards. She had deigned also to take
Richard’s education in hand. The lad was deplorably quiet, gauche, and
sensitive.
“So you are back at last, Richard,” she said, looking like a pompous old
parrot, with one eye on her cards and one on her nephew. “Seat yourself,
Dr. Sugg; Richard does not want you to stand on ceremony. Snowing, eh?
Detestable weather; the country is like a quagmire already, as I may see
by your coat and breeches, nephew. It is usual for a gentleman to dress
before presenting himself to a lady. You look surprised, Richard. ‘Is it
not my own house?’ you say. Certainly, mon cher, so it is, but I am a
lady of birth, sir, and I like to be treated as such. How is Mistress
Jilian? Deft at the harpsichord as ever?”
Richard, whose face had flushed towards the end of this oration, drew a
chair beside the card-table, and seated himself before the fire. It was
characteristic of the Lady Letitia that she had a habit of ruling and
correcting every one. She would tilt her beak of a nose, fix her wicked
little eyes on the victim, and drop gall and bitterness from her
shrivelled old mouth with a condescension that made her detestable.
There was an avaricious glint in the old lady’s eyes for the moment.
Poor Dr. Sugg, purple-faced and stertorous, came nightly to the priory
in clean ruffles and a well-powdered wig to permit the Lady Letitia to
possess herself of his small cash in the hope that the worthy dowager
might use her influence on his behalf with my lord the bishop.
Aunt Letitia turned suddenly and rapped her nephew’s shoulder with her
fan.
“Richard,” she said, with some asperity, “is it customary to sit between
a lady and the fire?”
Jeffray apologized and shifted his chair. Dr. Sugg was engaged in
shuffling the cards; the dowager’s black eyes were busy scanning her
nephew’s person with the critical keenness of a woman of the world.
“Richard, where did you get that coat?” she asked.
“At Lewes, aunt.”
“Pooh! the rascal has made it like a sack. You must have a smart tailor,
boy. I cannot allow you to be disgraced by your clothes.”
Dr. Sugg, who was glancing over his cards, cast a pathetic look at
Richard, and groaned over his inveterate bad luck. Aunt Letitia’s eyes
glistened; her rouged and scraggy face was radiant with miserly good
humor.
“My dear Richard,” she said, benignantly, “I must really take you to The
Wells with me, and introduce you into respectable society. You must
learn elegance, dignity, address. These virtues are as necessary to a
young man of good family as a good tailor or a smart hatter. You must
have your hair dressed properly; I will instruct Gladden myself in the
latest fashion. Bucolic melancholy does not pass for fine breeding in
elegant circles.”
Jeffray smiled somewhat cynically at his aunt as he watched her
clutching at poor Sugg’s shillings. He was heartily tired of his elderly
relative’s imperial patronage. She condescended to accept his
hospitality, and improved the occasion by pestering him with her worldly
superficialities, abusing his “bookishness” and amending his manners.
The nephew looked forward to his aunt’s departure with a sincerity that
was ingenuous and enthusiastic. The Lady Letitia was still, however,
bent upon economy. Though the country bored her excessively, she was
saving money at her nephew’s expense, and his hospitality would enable
her to go to Tunbridge Wells in the spring unencumbered by debt.
Dr. Suggs departed with an empty purse after supper, to trudge home to
the parsonage through the drifting snow. The Lady Letitia established
herself in a fauteuil beside the fire in the damask drawing-room, with
_Tom Jones_ on her knee and a glass of steaming rum at her elbow.
Jeffray had taken refuge in the library, the only room in the house that
Aunt Letitia suffered him to possess in peace. The dowager bore herself
as though she were the mistress of Rodenham Priory, walked the
linen-room and kitchen, rated the servants, and even bearded old Peter
Gladden, the butler, in his den.
Richard Jeffray had brought many books, pictures, and curios from
abroad, having been plentifully supplied with money by his father, who
had been something of an antiquary and a man of taste. The old library,
with its towering shelves and wainscoted walls, held the treasures that
Richard had transmitted from time to time from Italy. Here were Etruscan
and Greek vases; boxes of coins, rings, and charms; fragments of
statuary and of mosaic. The gathering of engraved stones had formed
Jeffray’s most extravagant hobby. Egyptian scarabæi, gnostic charms,
classical cameos and intaglios, mostly forged, were packed away in a
satinwood bureau. Jeffray boasted a strong-box full of sapphires,
emeralds, garnets, opals, chalcedonies, sards, jaspers and other stones.
Old Peter Gladden had set two lighted candles on the escritoire near the
window. A manuscript lay open on the writing flap, the manuscript of an
epic that Richard had been laboring at for months. It was conceived in
the Miltonic style, and dealt with the descent of Christ into Hades.
The Lady Letitia was yawning over the love affairs of Sophia Weston when
her nephew joined her in the drawing-room. She roused herself, sat up
stiffly in her chair, and held up her fan to keep the heat of the fire
from her painted face. The dowager regarded Richard with the solemnity
of a witch of Endor. Jeffray had learned to dread these nightly
interviews. Aunt Letitia was forever flinging her sarcasms at his head,
and being a sensitive and easy-tempered youth he had never presumed to
flout her in her pedagogic utterances.
It was evident to Richard that the dowager had been meditating as usual
over his youthful eccentricities. She looked more pompous and austere
than usual, like some hoary catechist ready to hear the callow creed of
youth. The wind was moaning over the great house, tossing the sombre
boughs of the cedars that towered above the lawns. The windows rattled;
every chimney was full of sound. Jeffray flung more wood upon the fire,
and sat down opposite his aunt with a look of melancholy resignation on
his face.
“Richard,” said the old lady, suddenly, tilting her red beak and fixing
her eyes upon her nephew.
Jeffray roused himself as from a reverie.
“You are often at Hardacre House.”
“Am I, Aunt Letitia?”
“Often enough, Richard, to suggest the attraction to me.”
Jeffray turned and watched the fire. The light played upon his sallow
face and melancholy eyes, his plain black coat, the white ruffles
falling down upon the small and refined hands. There was an air of
picturesqueness about him that even Aunt Letitia recognized, despite the
fact that she preferred a mischievous dandy to a book-befogged scholar.
“Richard.”
The young man glanced at her inquiringly.
“Jilian is thirty-five if she is a day. She pads her figure and dyes her
hair. You must be careful, lad. The wench has angled these twenty years.
I can make a better match for you than that.”
Richard had grown accustomed to the Lady Letitia’s blunt methods of
attack. He crossed one leg over the other, and strove to appear at his
ease under the old lady’s critical gaze. The dowager was forever hinting
at the undesirable nature of an alliance with the Hardacre family. They
had birth, certainly, but what were a baronet’s blazonings in
aristocratic England? Sir Peter was as poor as a parson; his estates
were mortgaged to the last tree. Miss Jilian had been in the market for
years, and would bring nothing in the shape of a dowry. The Lady Letitia
dilated materially on all these points, as though she were advising her
nephew on the purchase of a mansion.
“You are very kind, Aunt Letitia,” said the young man, somewhat
sullenly, at the end thereof, “but I believe I am capable of choosing
myself a wife.”
The old lady’s eyes glittered.
“So you are going to marry Jilian Hardacre, eh?”
“I did not say so.”
“Pooh, boy! haven’t I eyes in my head? So she has caught you, has she,
the minx? Yet I must confess, nephew, that you do not seem ravished at
the thought of embracing such a bride.”
Richard drew his knees up and fidgeted in his chair.
“Nothing of a serious nature has passed between us,” he said, awkwardly.
“Nothing serious, eh? And what do you call ‘serious,’ mon cher? Oglings
and letters, gloves, flowers, whisperings in window-seats! Egad, nephew,
you will have that gambling oaf of a Lot to deal with. They are mad to
marry Jilian, and they want money.”
The old lady was quite flushed and eloquent, while Richard’s brown face
expressed surprise. He was innocent of worldly guile, nor had he scented
such matrimonial subtleties in the Hardacre mansion.
“Sir Peter has been very kind to me,” he said.
“Noble old gentleman! And he has never been for pushing Miss Jilian into
your arms, eh? No, I warrant you, the wench is spry and buxom enough
herself. You are not a bad-looking lad, Richard, and you have money.”
Jeffray still appeared in a fog.
“I do not understand you, aunt,” he said.
“Not understand me!”
“No.”
“Nephew Dick, you are a bigger fool than I thought you were. Come, lad,
blab to me; have you offered yourself to the fair Jilian?”
Richard blushed, rather prettily for a man, and shook his head.
“It has not gone as far as that,” he confessed.
“Well, nephew,” she said, brusquely, “are you in love with the lady?”
“I thought I was—”
Aunt Letitia sniffed, and flicked her fan.
“Dear little love-bird,” she rasped, ironically; “let me warn you,
Richard, before it is too late, that unless this pretty romance is
locked in the lumber-room you will have that bully of a Lot raging round
here about his sister’s honor.”
Richard straightened up stiffly in his chair and stared at his aunt in
melancholy astonishment.
“I have done nothing to compromise Miss Jilian,” he said.
“Nothing!” and the old lady cackled.
“On my honor, Aunt Letitia.”
“Dear lad, how innocent you are! Your virginity is better than a sermon.
A pity Miss Jilian Hardacre cannot say the same about her sweet person.
Well, Richard, if you take an old woman’s advice, you will break with
the lady, delicately, gently, mind you. Miss Jilian is a tender young
thing, and must be handled with discretion.”
“And Cousin Lot—?”
“Can you fight, Richard?”
“Well, I am not much of a swordsman. But if Sir Peter thinks—”
“That you have paid undue attention to his dear daughter—”
“Yes—”
“You will sacrifice your virgin honor, eh?”
“Aunt Letitia, I trust I shall never act dishonorably by any woman.”
The dowager shut up her fan suddenly with a snap, yawned, and announced
that she was going to her chamber.
“You are an incorrigible fool, Richard,” she said, contemptuously;
“please ring for my maid. I see that it is quite useless to reason with
such a saint.”