The Last.
Old Lady Alice, who liked writing and reading letters, kept up an active
correspondence with her grandson, and that dutiful young gentleman
received them with an interest, and answered them with a punctuality
that did him honour.
Shortly after Lady Jane Lennox's departure from Wardlock, Lady Alice
Redcliffe and her fair young charge, Beatrix, arrived at that discreet
old dower house. Old Lady Alice, who, when moved, could do a
good-natured thing, pitying the solitariness of her pretty guest, so
soon as she thought her spirits would bear it, invited first the Miss
Radlowes, and afterwards the Miss Wynkletons--lively young ladies of
Beatrix's time of life--who helped to make Wardlock less depressing.
These hospitalities led to "invites;" and so the time passed over
without the tedium that might have been looked for, until the period
drew near when Beatrix was to make the Italian tour she had arranged
with that respectable and by no means disagreeable family, the Fentons
of Appleby. A rumour reached Guy that Drayton was to be one of the
party. This certainly was not pleasant. He alluded to it in his next
letter, but Lady Alice chose to pass the subject by.
There had been no step actually taken in the threatened lawsuit since
the death of Sir Jekyl. But there were unpleasant rumours, and Pelter
and Crowe were in communication with the Rev. Sir Dives Marlowe on the
subject, and he occasionally communicated his peevish sense of poor
Jekyl's unreasonableness in having died just when everything was at
sixes and sevens, and the unfairness of his having all the trouble and
so little of the estates.
Varbarriere, I suppose, was on good terms once more with his nephew.
There was no more talk of Algeria, and they were now again in London.
That corpulent old gentleman used to smile with an unctuous scorn over
the long letters with which Lady Alice occasionally favoured him.
"My faith! she must suppose I have fine leisure, good eyes also, to read
all that. I wish, Guy, she would distinguish only you with her
correspondence. I suppose if I answer her never, she will cease some
time."
He had a letter from her while in London, on which he discoursed in the
above vein. I doubt that he ever read it through.
Guy received one by the same post, in the conclusion of which she said--
"Beatrix Marlowe goes in a few days, with the Fentons, to Paris, and
thence to Italy. My house will then be a desert, and I miserably
solitary, unless you and your uncle will come to me, as you long since
promised, and as you well know there is nothing to prevent. I have
written to him, naming Wednesday week. I shall then have rooms in which
to place you, and you positively must not refuse."
Under this hospitable pressure, Varbarriere resolved to make the visit
to Wardlock--a flying visit of a day and night--rather to hear what she
might have to say than to enjoy the excellent lady's society. From
Slowton, having there got rid of their railway dust and vapour, the
gentlemen reached Wardlock at the approach of evening. In the hall they
found old Lady Alice, her thin stooping figure cloaked and shawled for a
walk, and her close bonnet shading her hollow and wrinkled face.
Hospitable in her way, and really glad to see her guests, was the crone.
She would have dismantled and unbonneted, and called for luncheon, and
would have led the way into the parlour; but they would not hear of such
things, having refreshed at Slowton, and insisted instead on joining the
old lady in her walk.
There is a tall glass door in the back hall, which opens on the shorn
grass, and through it they passed into the circumscribed but pretty
pleasure-ground, a quadrangle, of which the old house, overgrown with
jessamine and woodbine, formed nearly one side; the opposite garden
wall, overtopped with ancient fruit-trees, another; and screens of
tall-stemmed birch and ash, and an underwood of juniper and evergreens,
the others; beds of brilliant verbena here and there patterned the green
sod; and the whole had an air so quaint and cloister-like, as drew forth
some honest sentences of admiration from old Varbarriere.
They strolled among these flowers in this pleasant seclusion for a time,
until Lady Alice pronounced herself fatigued, and sat down upon a
rustic seat, with due ceremony of adjustment and assistance.
"Sit down by me, Mr. Strangways. Which am I to call you, by-the-bye?"
"Which you please, madam," answered Varbarriere, with the kind of smile
he used with her--deferential, with, nevertheless, a suspicion of the
scornful and amused in it, and as he spoke he was seated.
"As for you, grandson," she continued, "you had better take a walk in
the garden--you'll find the door open;" she pointed with her parasol to
the old-fashioned fluted door-case of Caen stone in the garden wall;
"and I want to talk a little to my friend, M. de Varbarriere--Mr.
Strangways, as I remember him." And turning to that sage, she said--
"You got my letter, and have well considered it, I trust?"
"I never fail to consider well anything that falls from Lady Alice
Redcliffe."
"Well, sir, I must tell you----"
These were the last words that Guy heard as he departed, according to
orders, to visit her ladyship's old-fashioned garden. Could a young
fellow fancy a duller entertainment? Yet to Guy Deverell it was not
dull. Everything he looked on here was beautified and saddened by the
influence that had been there so recently and was gone.
Those same roses, whose leaves were dropping to the earth, she had seen
but a day or two ago in their melancholy clusters; under these tall
trees she had walked, here on this rustic seat she had rested; and Guy,
like a reverent worshipper of relics, sat him down in the same seat,
and, with a strange thrill, fancied he saw a pencilled word or two on
the arm of it. But no, it was nothing, only the veining of the wood. Why
do ladies use their pencils so much less than we men, and so seldom
(those I mean whose relics are precious) trace a line by chance, and
throw this bread upon the waters, where we poor devils pull cheerless
against wind and tide?
Here were flowers, too, tied up on tall sticks. He wondered whether
Beatrix ever tended these with her delicate fingers, and he rose and
looked at the bass-mat with inexpressible feeling.
Then, on a sudden, he stopped by a little circle of annuals, overgrown,
run into pod, all draggled, but in the centre a split stick and a piece
of bleached paper folded and stuck across it. Had she written the name
of the flower, which perhaps she sowed? and he plucked the stick from
the earth, and with tender fingers unfolded the record. In a hideous
scrawl, evidently the seedsman's, "Lupines" sprawled across the
weather-beaten brown paper.
He raised his eyes with a sigh, and perceived that the respectable
gardener, in a blue body-coat with brass buttons, was at hand, and eyed
him with a rather stern inquisitiveness. Guy threw the stick down
carelessly, feeling a little foolish, and walked on with more swagger
than usual.
And now he had entered that distant part of the garden where dark and
stately yew hedges, cut here and there in arches, form a meditative
maze. With the melancholy yearnings of a lover he gazed on these, no
doubt the recent haunts of that beautiful creature who was his
day-dream. With a friendly feeling he looked on the dark wall of yew on
either side; and from this solemn walk he turned into another, and--saw
Beatrix!
More beautiful than ever he thought her--her features a little saddened.
Each gazed on the other, as the old stories truly say in such cases,
with changing colour. Each had imagined the other more than a hundred
miles away. Neither had fancied a meeting likely, perhaps possible. The
matter hung upon the wills of others, who might never consent until too
late. A few days would see Beatrix on her way to Italy with the Fentons;
and yet here were she and Guy Deverell, by the sleight of that not
ill-natured witch, old Lady Alice, face to face.
I don't know exactly what Guy said. I don't know what she answered. The
rhetoric was chiefly his; but he held her hand in his, and from time to
time pleaded, not quite in vain, for a word from the goddess with
glowing cheeks and downcast eyes, by whose side he walked. Low were
those tones, and few those words, that answered his impetuous periods;
yet there was a magic in them that made him prouder and more blessed
than ever his hopes had dared to promise.
Sometimes they stopped, sometimes they walked slowly on, quite
unconscious whether they moved or paused--whether the birds sang or were
silent--of all things but their love--in a beautiful dream.
They had surprised one another, and now in turn both were surprised by
others; for under one of those airy arches cut so sharply in the yew
hedge, on a sudden, stood old Lady Alice and Monsieur Varbarriere--the
Enchanter and the Fairy at the close of a tale.
Indulgently, benevolently, the superior powers looked on. The young
people paused, abashed. A sharp little nod from Lady Alice told them
they were understood. Varbarriere came forward, and took the young
lady's hand very kindly, and held it very long, and at the close of his
salutation, stooping towards her pretty ear, murmured something,
smiling, which made her drop her eyes again.
"I think you both might have waited until I had spoken to you; however,
it does not signify much. I don't expect to be of any great consequence,
or in any great request henceforward."
Her grandson hastened to plead his excuses, which were received, I must
allow, with a good grace.
In matters of true love, I have observed, where not only Cupid applauds,
but Plutus smiles, Hymen seldom makes much pother about his share in the
business. Beatrix did _not_ make that tour with the Fentons. They, on
the contrary, delayed their departure for rather more than a month; and
I find Miss Fenton and Miss Arabella Fenton among the bridesmaids.
Drayton did not attend the wedding, and oddly enough, was married only
about three weeks after to Lady Justina Flynston, who was not pretty,
and had but little money; and they say he has turned out rather cross,
and hates the French and all their products, as "utter rot."
Varbarriere has established two great silk-factories, and lives in
France, where they say gold pours in upon him in streams before which
the last editor of "Aladdin" and Mr. Kightley of the "Ancient Mythology"
hang their heads. His chief "object" is the eldest son of the happy
union which we have seen celebrated a few lines back. They would have
called the boy Herbert, but Varbarriere would not hear of anything but
Guy. They say that he is a prodigy of beauty and cleverness. Of course,
we hear accounts of infant phenomena with allowance. All I can say is,
"If he's not handsome it's very odd, and he has at least as good a right
to be clever as most boys going." And as in these pages we have heard
something of a father, a son, and a grandson, each bearing the same
name, I think I can't do better than call this tale after them--GUY
DEVERELL.
THE END.
PRINTING OFFICE OF THE PUBLISHER.
End of Project Gutenberg's Guy Deverell, v. 2 of 2, by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu