"It might have been."
"They are the most curious pair of lovers I ever saw in my life," said
one of the visitors at Ashbourne, a young lady who had been engaged to
be married more than once, and might fairly consider herself an
authority upon such matters. "One never sees them together."
"They are cousins," replied her companion. "What can you expect from a
courtship between cousins? It must be the most humdrum affair possible."
"All courtships are humdrum, unless there is opposition from parents,
or something out of the common order to enliven them," said somebody
else.
The speakers were a party of young ladies, who were getting through an
idle hour after breakfast in the billiard-room.
"Lady Mabel is just the sort of girl no man could be desperately in
love with," said another. "She is very pretty, and elegant, and
accomplished, and all that sort of thing--but she is so overpoweringly
well satisfied with herself that it seems superfluous for anyone to
admire her.'
"In spite of that I know of someone in this house who does immensely
admire her," asserted the young lady who had spoken first. "Much more
than I should approve if I were Mr. Vawdrey."
"I think I know----" began somebody, and then abruptly remarked: "What
a too ridiculous stroke! And I really thought I was going to make a
cannon."
This sudden change in the current of the talk was due to the appearance
of the subject of this friendly disquisition. Lady Mabel had that
moment entered, followed by Lord Mallow, not intent on billiards, like
the frivolous damsels assembled round the table. There were book-cases
all along one side of the billiard-room, containing the surplus books
that had overrun the shelves in the library; and Mabel had come to look
for a particular volume among these. It was a treatise upon the
antiquities of Ireland. Lord Mallow and Lady Mabel had been disputing
about the Round Towers.
"Of course you are right," said the Irishman, when she had triumphantly
exhibited a page which supported her side of the argument. "What a
wonderful memory you have! What a wife you would make for a statesman!
You would be worth half-a-dozen secretaries!"
Mabel blushed, and smiled faintly, with lowered eyelids.
"Do you remember that concluding picture in 'My Novel,'" she asked,
"where Violante tempts Harley Lestrange from his idle musing over
Horace, to toil through blue-books; and, when she is stealing softly
from the room, he detains her and bids her copy an extract for him? 'Do
you think I would go through this labour,' he says, 'if you were not to
halve this success? Halve the labour as well.' I have always envied
Violante that moment in her life."
"And who would not envy Harley such a wife as Violante," returned Lord
Mallow, "if she was like--the woman I picture her?"
Three hours later Lord Mallow and Lady Mabel met by accident in the
garden. It was an afternoon of breathless heat and golden sunlight, the
blue ether without a cloud--a day on which the most restless spirit
might be content to yield to the drowsiness of the atmosphere, and lie
at ease upon the sunburnt grass and bask in the glory of summer. Lord
Mallow had never felt so idle, in the whole course of his vigorous
young life.
"I don't know what has come to me," he said to himself; "I can't settle
to any kind of work; and I don't care a straw for sight-seeing with a
pack of nonentities."
A party had gone off in a drag, soon after breakfast, to see some
distant ruins; and Lord Mallow had refused to be of that party, though
it included some of the prettiest girls at Ashbourne. He had stayed at
home, on pretence of writing important letters, but had not, so far,
penned a line. "It must be the weather," said Lord Mallow.
An hour or so after luncheon he strolled out into the gardens, having
given up all idea of writing those letters, There was a wide lawn, that
sloped from the terrace in front of the drawing-room windows, a lawn
encircled by a belt of carefully-chosen timber. It was not very old
timber, but it was sufficiently umbrageous. There were tulip-trees, and
copper-beeches, and Douglas pines, and deodoras. There were shrubs of
every kind, and winding paths under the trees, and rustic benches here
and there to repose the wearied traveller.
On one of these benches, placed in a delicious spot, shaded by a group
of pines, commanding the wide view of valley and distant hill far away
towards Ringwood, Lord Mallow found Lady Mabel seated reading. She was
looking delightfully cool amidst the sultry heat of the scene,
perfectly dressed in soft white muslin, with much adornment of delicate
lace and pale-hued ribbon: but she was not looking happy. She was
gazing at the open volume on her knee, with fixed and dreamy eyes that
saw not the page; and as Lord Mallow came very near, with steps that
made no sound on the fallen pine-needles, he saw that there were tears
upon her drooping eyelids.
There are moments in every man's life when impulse is stronger than
discretion. Lord Mallow gave the reins to impulse now, and seated
himself by Lady Mabel's side, and took her hand in his, with an air of
sympathy so real that the lady forgot to be offended.
"Forgive me for having surprised your tears," he murmured gently.
"I am very foolish," she said, blushing deeply as she became aware of
the hand clasping hers, and suddenly withdrawing her own; "but there
are passages of Dante that are too pathetic."
"Oh, it was Dante!" exclaimed Lord Mallow, with a disappointed air.
He looked down at the page on her lap.
"Yes, naturally."
She had been reading about Paolo and Francesca--that one episode, in
all the catalogue of sin and sorrow, which melts every heart; a page at
which the volume seems to open of its own accord.
Lord Mallow leaned down and read the lines in a low voice, slowly, with
considerable feeling; and then he looked softly up at Mabel Ashbourne,
and at the landscape lying below them, in all the glow and glory of the
summer light, and looked back to the lady, with his hand still on the
book.
The strangeness of the situation: they two alone in the garden, unseen,
unheard by human eye or ear; the open book between them--a subtle bond
of union--hinting at forbidden passion.
"They were deeply to be pitied," said Lord Mallow, meaning the guilty
lovers.
"It was very sad," murmured Lady Mabel.
"But they were neither the first nor the last who have found out too
late that they were created to be happy in each other's love, and had
by an accident missed that supreme chance of happiness," said Lord
Mallow, with veiled intention.
Mabel sighed, and took the book from the gentleman's hand, and drew a
little farther off on the bench. She was not the kind of young woman to
yield tremblingly to the first whisper of an unauthorised love. It was
all very well to admire Francesca, upon strictly aesthetic grounds, as
the perfection of erring womanhood, beautiful even in her guilt.
Francesca had lived so long ago--in days so entirely mediaeval, that
one could afford to regard her with indulgent pity. But it was not to
be supposed that a modern duke's daughter was going to follow that
unfortunate young woman's example, and break plighted vows. Betrothal,
in the eyes of so exalted a moralist as Lady Mabel, was a tie but one
degree less sacred than marriage.
"Why did you not go to see the ruins?" she asked, resuming her society
tone.
"Because I was in a humour in which ruins would have been unutterably
odious. Indeed, Lady Mabel, I am just now very much of Macbeth's
temper, when he began to be a-weary of the sun."
"Has the result of the session disappointed you?"
"Naturally. When was that ever otherwise? Parliament opens full of
promise, like a young king who has just ascended the throne, and
everybody is to be made happy; all burdens are to be lightened, the
seeds of all good things that have been hidden deep in earth through
the slow centuries are to germinate all at once, and blossom, and bear
fruit. And the session comes to an end; and, lo! a great many good
things have been talked about, and no good thing has been done. That is
in the nature of things. No, Lady Mabel, it is not that which makes me
unhappy."
He waited for her to ask him what his trouble was, but she kept silence.
"No," he repeated, "it is not that."
Again there was no reply; and he went on awkwardly, like an actor who
has missed his cue.
"Since I have known you I have been at once too happy and too wretched.
Happy--unspeakably happy in your society; miserable in the knowledge
that I could never be more to you than an unit in the crowd."
"You were a great deal more to me than that," said Mabel softly. She
bad been on her guard against him just now, but when he thus abased
himself before her she took pity upon him, and became dangerously
amiable. "I shall never forget your kindness about those wretched
verses."
"I will not hear you speak ill of them," cried Lord Mallow indignantly.
"You have but shared the common fate of genius, in having a mind in
advance of your age."
Lady Mabel breathed a gentle sigh of resignation.
"I am not so weak as to think myself a genius," she murmured; "but I
venture to hope my poor verses will be better understood twenty years
hence than they are now."
"Undoubtedly!" cried Lord Mallow, with conviction. "Look at Wordsworth;
in his lifetime the general reading public considered him a prosy old
gentleman, who twaddled pleasantly about lakes and mountains, and
pretty little peasant girls. The world only awakened ten years ago to
the fact of his being a great poet and a sublime philosopher; and I
shouldn't be very much surprised," added Lord Mallow meditatively, "if
in ten years more the world were to go to sleep again and forget him."
Lady Mabel looked at her watch.
"I think I will go in and give mamma her afternoon cup of tea," she
said.
"Don't go yet," pleaded Lord Mallow, "it is only four, and I know the
Duchess does not take tea till five. Give me one of your last hours. A
lady who is just going to be married is something like Socrates after
his sentence. Her friends surround her; she is in their midst, smiling,
serene, diffusing sweetness and light; but they know she is going from
them--they are to lose her, yes, to lose her almost as utterly as if
she were doomed to die."
"That is taking a very dismal view of marriage," said Mabel, pale, and
trifling nervously with her watch-chain.
This was the first time Lord Mallow had spoken to her of the
approaching event.
"Is it not like death? Does it not bring change and parting to old
friends? When you are Lady Mabel Vawdrey, can I ever be with you as I
am now? You will have new interests, you will be shut in by a network
of new ties. I shall come some morning to see you amidst your new
surroundings, and shall find a stranger. My Lady Mabel will be dead and
buried."
There is no knowing how long Lord Mallow might have meandered on in
this dismal strain, if he had not been seasonably interrupted by the
arrival of Mr. Vawdrey, who came sauntering along the winding
shrubbery-walk, with his favourite pointer Hecate at his heels. He
advanced towards his betrothed at the leisurely pace of a man whose
courtship is over, whose fate is sealed, and from whom society exacts
nothing further, except a decent compliance with the arrangements other
people make for him.
He seemed in no wise disconcerted at finding his sweetheart and Lord
Mallow seated side by side, alone, in that romantic and solitary spot.
He pressed Mabel's hand kindly, and gave the Irishman a friendly nod.
"What have you been doing with yourself all the morning, Roderick?"
asked Lady Mabel, with that half-reproachful air which is almost the
normal expression of a betrothed young lady in her converse with her
lover.
"Oh, pottering about at Briarwood. The workmen are such fools. I am
making some slight alterations in the stables, on a plan of my
own--putting in mangers, and racks, and pillars, and partitions, from
the St. Pancras Ironworks, making sanitary improvements and so on--and
I have to contend with so much idiocy in our local workmen. If I did
not stand by and see drain-pipes put in and connections made, I believe
the whole thing would go wrong."
"It must be very dreadful for you," exclaimed Lady Mabel.
"It must be intolerable!" cried Lord Mallow; "what, when the moments
are golden, when 'Love takes up the glass of Time, and turns it in his
glowing hands,' when 'Love takes up the harp of life, and smites on all
the chords with might,' you have to devote your morning to watching the
laying of drain-pipes and digging of sewers! I cannot imagine a more
afflicted man."
Lady Mabel saw the sneer, but her betrothed calmly ignored it.
"Of course it's a nuisance," he said carelessly; "but I had rather be
my own clerk of the works than have the whole thing botched. I thought
you were going to Wellbrook Abbey with the house party, Mabel?"
"I know every stone of the Abbey by heart. No, I have been dawdling
about the grounds all the afternoon. It is much too warm for riding or
driving."
Lady Mabel strangled an incipient yawn. She had not yawned once in all
her talk with Lord Mallow. Rorie stifled another, and Lord Mallow
walked up and down among the pine-needles, like a caged lion. It would
have been polite to leave the lovers to themselves, perhaps. They might
have family matters to discuss, settlements, wedding presents, Heaven
knows what. But Lord Mallow was not going to leave them alone. He was
in a savage humour, in which the petty rules and regulations of a
traditionary etiquette were as nothing to him. So he stayed, pacing
restlessly, with his hands in his pockets, and inwardly delighted at
the stupid spectacle presented by the affianced lovers, who had nothing
to say to each other, and were evidently bored to the last degree by
their own society.
"This is the deplorable result of trying to ferment the small beer of
cousinly affection into the Maronean wine of passionate love," thought
Lord Mallow. "Idiotic parents have imagined that these two people ought
to marry, because they were brought up together, and the little girl
took kindly to the little boy. What little girl does not take kindly to
anything in the shape of a boy, when they are both in the nursery?
Hence these tears."
"I am going to pour out mamma's tea," Lady Mabel said presently, keenly
sensible of the stupidity of her position. "Will you come, Roderick?
Mamma will be glad to know that you are alive. She was wondering about
you all the time we were at luncheon."
"I ought not to have been off duty so long," Mr. Vawdrey answered
meekly; "but if you could only imagine the stupidity of those
bricklayers! The day before yesterday I found half-a-dozen stalwart
fellows sitting upon a wall, with their hands in their corduroy
pockets, smoking short pipes, and, I believe, talking politics. They
pretended to be at a standstill because their satellites--their _âmes
damnées_, the men who hold their hods and mix their mortar--had not
turned up. 'Don't disturb yourselves, gentlemen,' I said. 'There's
nothing like taking things easy. It's a time-job. I'll send you the
morning papers and a can of beer.' And so I did, and since that day, do
you know, the fellows have worked twice as hard. They don't mind being
bullied; but they can't stand chaff."
"What an interesting bit of character," said Lady Mabel, with a faintly
perceptible sneer. "Worthy of Henri Constant."
"May I come to the Duchess's kettledrum?' asked Lord Mallow humbly.
"By all means," answered Mabel. "How fond you gentlemen pretend to be
of afternoon tea, nowadays. But I don't believe it is the tea you
really care for. It is the gossip you all like. Darwin has found out
that the male sex is the vain sex: but I don't think he has gone so far
as to discover another great truth. It is the superior sex for whom
scandal has the keenest charm."
"I have never heard the faintest hiss of the serpent slander at the
Duchess's tea-table," said Lord Mallow.
"No; we are dreadfully behind the age," assented Lady Mabel. "We
continue to exist without thinking ill of our neighbours."
They all three sauntered towards the house, choosing the sheltered
ways, and skirting the broad sunny lawn, whose velvet sward, green even
in this tropical July, was the result of the latest improvements in
cultivation, ranging from such simple stimulants as bone-dust and
wood-ashes to the last development of agricultural chemistry. Lady
Mabel and her companions were for the most part silent during this
leisurely walk home, and, when one of them hazarded an observation, the
attempt at conversation had a forced air, and failed to call forth any
responsive brilliancy in the others.
The Duchess looked provokingly cool and comfortable in her
morning-room, which was an airy apartment on the first-floor, with a
wide window opening upon a rustic balcony, verandahed and trellised,
garlanded with passion-flowers and Australian clematis, and altogether
sheltered from sun and wind. The most reposeful sofas, the roomiest
arm-chairs in all the house were to be found here, covered with a cool
shining chintz of the good old-fashioned sort, apple-blossoms and
spring-flowers on a white ground.
A second window in a corner opened into a small fernery, in which there
was a miniature water-fall that trickled with a slumberous sound over
moss-grown rockwork. There could hardly have been a better room for
afternoon tea on a sultry summer day; and afternoon tea at Ashbourne
included iced coffee, and the finest peaches and nectarines that were
grown in the county; and when the Duke happened to drop in for a chat
with his wife and daughter, sometimes went as far as sherry and
Angustura bitters.
The Duchess received her daughter with her usual delighted air, as if
the ethereal-looking young lady in India muslin had verily been a
goddess.
"I hope you have not been fatiguing yourself in the orchid-houses on
such an afternoon as this, my pet," she said anxiously.
"No, indeed, mamma; it is much too warm for the orchid-houses. I have
been in the shrubbery reading, or trying to read, but it is dreadful
sleepy weather. We shall all be glad to get some tea. Oh, here it
comes."
A match pair of footmen brought a pair of silver trays: caddy, kettle,
and teapot, and cups and saucers on one; and a lavish pile of fruit,
such as Lance would have loved to paint, on the other.
Lady Mabel took up the quaint little silver caddy and made the tea.
Roderick began to eat peaches. Lord Mallow, true to his nationality,
seated himself by the Duchess, and paid her a compliment.
"There are some more parcels for you, Mabel," said the fond mother
presently, glancing at a side-table, where sundry neatly-papered
packets suggested jewellery.
"More presents, I suppose," the young lady murmured languidly. "Now I
do hope people have not sent me any more jewellery. I wear so little,
and I--"
Have so much, she was going to say, but checked herself on the verge of
a remark that savoured of vulgar arrogance.
She went on with the tea-making, uncurious as to the inside of those
dainty-looking parcels. She had been surfeited with presents before she
left her nursery. A bracelet or a locket more or less could not make
the slightest difference in her feelings. She entertained a
condescending pity for the foolish people who squandered their money in
buying her such things, when they ought to know that she had a
superfluity of much finer jewels than any they could give her.
"Don't you want to see your presents?" asked Rorie, looking at her, in
half-stupid wonder at such calm superiority.
"They will keep till we have done tea. I can guess pretty well what
they are like. How many church-services have people sent me, mamma?"
"I think the last made fourteen," murmured the Duchess, trifling with
her tea-spoon.
"And how many 'Christian Years'?"
"Nine."
"And how many copies of Doré's 'Idylls of the King'?"
"One came this morning from Mrs. Scobel. I think it was the fifth."
"How many lockets inscribed with A. E. I. or 'Mizpah'?"
"My darling, I could not possibly count those. There were three more by
post this morning."
"You see there is rather a sameness in these things," said Lady Mabel;
"and you can understand why I am not rabidly curious about the contents
of these parcels. I feel sure there will be another 'Mizpah' among
them."
She had received Lord Mallow's tribute, an Irish jaunting-car, built
upon the newest lines, and altogether a most perfect vehicle for
driving to a meet in, so light and perfectly balanced as to travel
safely through the ruttiest glade in Mark Ash.
Rorie's gifts had all been given, so Lady Mabel could afford to make
light of the unopened parcels without fear of wounding the feelings of
anyone present.
They were opened by-and-by, when the Duke came in from his farm, sorely
disturbed in his mind at the serious indisposition of a
six-hundred-guinea cart-horse, which hapless prize animal had been
fatted to such an inflammatory condition that in his case the commonest
ailment might prove deadly. Depressed by this calamity, the Duke
required to be propped up with sherry and Angustura bitters, which
tonic mixture was presently brought to him by one of the match footmen,
who looked very much as if he were suffering from the same plethoric
state that was likely to prove fatal to the cart-horse. Happily, the
footman's death would be but a temporary inconvenience. The Duke had
not given six hundred guineas for him.
Lady Mabel opened her parcels, in the hope of distracting her father
from the contemplation of his trouble.
"From whom can this be?" she asked wonderingly, "with the Jersey
post-mark? Do I know anyone in Jersey?"
Roderick grew suddenly crimson, and became deeply absorbed in the
business of peeling a nectarine.
"I surely cannot know anyone in Jersey," said Lady Mabel, in languid
wonderment. "It is an altogether impossible place. Nobody in society
goes there. It sounds almost as disreputable as Boulogne."
"You'd better open the packet," said Rorie, with a quiver in his voice.
"Perhaps it is from some of your friends," speculated Mabel.
She broke the seal, and tore the cover off a small morocco case.
"What a lovely pair of earrings!" she exclaimed.
Each eardrop was a single turquoise, almost as large, and quite as
clear in colour, as a hedge-sparrow's egg. The setting was Roman,
exquisitely artistic.
"Now I can forgive anyone for sending me such jewellery as that," said
Lady Mabel. "It is not the sort of thing one sees in every jeweller's
shop."
Rorie looked at the blue stones with rueful eyes. He knew them well. He
had seen them contrasted with ruddy chestnut hair, and the whitest skin
in Christendom--or at any rate the whitest he had ever seen, and a
man's world can be but the world he knows.
"There is a letter," said Lady Mabel. "Now I shall find out all about
my mysterious Jersey friend."
She read the letter aloud.
"Les Tourelles, Jersey, July 25th.
"Dear Lady Mabel,--I cannot bear that your wedding-day should go by
without bringing you some small token of regard from your husband's old
friend. Will you wear these earrings now and then, and believe that
they come from one who has nothing but good wishes for Rorie's
wife?--Yours very truly,
"VIOLET TEMPEST."
"Why, they are actually from your old playfellow!" cried Mabel, with a
laugh that had not quite a genuine ring in its mirth. "The young lady
who used to follow the staghounds, in a green habit with brass buttons,
ever so many years ago, and who insisted on calling you Rorie. She does
it still, you see. How very sweet of her to send me a wedding-present.
I ought to have remembered. I heard something about her being sent off
to Jersey by her people, because she had grown rather incorrigible at
home."
"She was not incorrigible, and she was not sent off to Jersey," said
Roderick grimly. "She left home of her own free will; because she could
not hit it with her stepfather."
"That is another way of expressing it, but I think we both mean pretty
much the same thing," retorted Mabel. "But I don't want to know why she
went to Jersey. She has behaved very sweetly in sending me such a
pretty letter; and when she is at home again I shall be very happy to
see her at my garden-parties."
Lord Mallow had no share in this conversation, for the Duke had
buttonholed him, and was giving him a detailed account of the
cart-horse's symptoms.
The little party dispersed soon after this, and did not foregather
again until just before dinner, when the people who had been to see the
ruins were all assembled, full of their day's enjoyment, and of sundry
conversational encounters which they had had with the natives of the
district. They gave themselves the usual airs which people who have
been laboriously amusing themselves inflict upon those wiser
individuals who prefer the passive pleasure of repose, and made a merit
of having exposed themselves to the meridian sun, in the pursuit of
archaeological knowledge.
Lady Mabel looked pale and weary all that evening. Roderick was so
evidently distrait that the good-natured Duke thought that he must be
worrying himself about the cart-horse, and begged him to make his mind
easy, as it was possible the animal might even yet recover.
Later on in the evening Lady Mabel and Lord Mallow sat in the
conservatory and talked Irish politics, while Rorie and the younger
members of the house party played Nap. The conservatory was deliciously
cool on this summer evening, dimly lighted by lamps that were half
hidden among the palms and orange-trees. Lady Mabel and her companion
could see the stars shining through the open doorway, and the mystical
darkness of remote woods. Their voices were hushed; there were pauses
of silence in their talk. Never had the stirring question of Home Rule
been more interesting.
Lady Mabel did not go back to the drawing-room that evening. There was
a door leading from the conservatory to the hall; and, while Rorie and
the young people were still somewhat noisily engaged in the game of
Napoleon, Lady Mabel went out to the hall with Lord Mallow in
attendance upon her. When he had taken her candle from the table and
lighted it, he paused for a moment or so before he handed it to her,
looking at her very earnestly all the while, as she stood at the foot
of the staircase, with saddened face and downcast eyes, gravely
contemplative of the stair-carpet.
"Is it--positively--too late?" he asked.
"You must feel and know that it is so," she answered.
"But it might have been?"
"Yes," she murmured with a faint sigh, "it might have been."
He gave her the candlestick, and she went slowly upstairs, without a
word of good-night. He stood in the hall, watching the slim figure as
it ascended, aerial and elegant in its palely-tinted drapery.
"It might have been," he repeated to himself: and then he lighted his
candle and went slowly up the staircase. He was in no humour for
billiards, cigars, or noisy masculine talk to-night. Still less was he
inclined to be at ease and to make merry with Roderick Vawdrey.