THE YOUNG SOLDIER'S RETURN.
The rain beats down upon the battlemented roof of Marchmont Towers this
July day, as if it had a mind to flood the old mansion. The flat waste
of grass, and the lonely clumps of trees, are almost blotted out by the
falling rain. The low grey sky shuts out the distance. This part of
Lincolnshire--fenny, misty, and flat always--seems flatter and mistier
than usual to-day. The rain beats hopelessly upon the leaves in the
wood behind Marchmont Towers, and splashes into great pools beneath the
trees, until the ground is almost hidden by the fallen water, and the
trees seem to be growing out of a black lake. The land is lower behind
Marchmont Towers, and slopes down gradually to the bank of a dismal
river, which straggles through the Marchmont property at a snail's
pace, to gain an impetus farther on, until it hurries into the sea
somewhere northward of Grimsby. The wood is not held in any great
favour by the household at the Towers; and it has been a pet project of
several Marchmonts to level and drain it, but a project not very easily
to be carried out. Marchmont Towers is said to be unhealthy, as a
dwelling-house, by reason of this wood, from which miasmas rise in
certain states of the weather; and it is on this account that the back
of the house--the eastern front, at least, as it is called--looking to
the wood is very little used.
Mary Marchmont sits at a window in the western drawing-room, watching
the ceaseless falling of the rain upon this dreary summer afternoon.
She is little changed since the day upon which Edward Arundel saw her
in Oakley Street. She is taller, of course, but her figure is as
slender and childish as ever: it is only her face in which the
earnestness of premature womanhood reveals itself in a grave and sweet
serenity very beautiful to contemplate. Her soft brown eyes have a
pensive shadow in their gentle light; her mouth is even more pensive.
It has been said of Jane Grey, of Mary Stuart, of Marie Antoinette,
Charlotte Corday, and other fated women, that in the gayest hours of
their youth they bore upon some feature, or in some expression, the
shadow of the End--an impalpable, indescribable presage of an awful
future, vaguely felt by those who looked upon them.
Is it thus with Mary Marchmont? Has the solemn hand of Destiny set that
shadowy brand upon the face of this child, that even in her prosperity,
as in her adversity, she should be so utterly different from all other
children? Is she already marked out for some womanly martyrdom--already
set apart for more than common suffering?
She sits alone this afternoon, for her father is busy with his agent.
Wealth does not mean immunity from all care and trouble; and Mr.
Marchmont has plenty of work to get through, in conjunction with his
land-steward, a hard-headed Yorkshireman, who lives at Kemberling, and
insists on doing his duty with pertinacious honesty.
The large brown eyes looked wistfully out at the dismal waste and the
falling rain. There was a wretched equestrian making his way along the
carriage-drive.
"Who can come to see us on such a day?" Mary thought. "It must be Mr.
Gormby, I suppose;"--the agent's name was Gormby. "Mr. Gormby never
cares about the wet; but then I thought he was with papa. Oh, I hope it
isn't anybody coming to call."
But Mary forgot all about the struggling equestrian the next moment.
She had some morsel of fancy-work upon her lap, and picked it up and
went on with it, setting slow stitches, and letting her thoughts wander
far away from Marchmont Towers--to India, I am afraid; or to that
imaginary India which she had created for herself out of such images as
were to be picked up in the "Arabian Nights." She was roused suddenly
by the opening of a door at the farther end of the room, and by the
voice of a servant, who mumbled a name which sounded something like Mr.
Armenger.
She rose, blushing a little, to do honour to one of her father's county
acquaintance, as she thought; when a fair-haired gentleman dashed in,
very much excited and very wet, and made his way towards her.
"I _would_ come, Miss Marchmont," he said,--"I would come, though the
day was so wet. Everybody vowed I was mad to think of it, and it was as
much as my poor brute of a horse could do to get over the ten miles of
swamp between this and my uncle's house; but I would come! Where's
John? I want to see John. Didn't I always tell him he'd come into the
Lincolnshire property? Didn't I always say so, now? You should have
seen Martin Mostyn's face--he's got a capital berth in the War Office,
and he's such a snob!--when I told him the news: it was as long as my
arm! But I must see John, dear old fellow! I long to congratulate him."
Mary stood with her hands clasped, and her breath coming quickly. The
blush had quite faded out, and left her unusually pale. But Edward
Arundel did not see this: young gentlemen of four-and-twenty are not
very attentive to every change of expression in little girls of
thirteen.
"Oh, is it you, Mr. Arundel? Is it really you?"
She spoke in a low voice, and it was almost difficult to keep the
rushing tears back while she did so. She had pictured him so often in
peril, in famine, in sickness, in death, that to see him here, well,
happy, light-hearted, cordial, handsome, and brave, as she had seen him
four-and-a-half years before in the two-pair back in Oakley Street, was
almost too much for her to bear without the relief of tears. But she
controlled her emotion as bravely as if she had been a woman of twenty.
"I am so glad to see you," she said quietly; "and papa will be so glad
too! It is the only thing we want, now we are rich; to have you with
us. We have talked of you so often; and I--we--have been so unhappy
sometimes, thinking that----"
"That I should be killed, I suppose?"
"Yes; or wounded very, very badly. The battles in India have been
dreadful, have they not?"
Mr. Arundel smiled at her earnestness.
"They have not been exactly child's play," he said, shaking back his
chesnut hair and smoothing his thick moustache. He was a man now, and a
very handsome one; something of that type which is known in this year
of grace as "swell"; but brave and chivalrous withal, and not afflicted
with any impediment in his speech. "The men who talk of the Affghans as
a chicken-hearted set of fellows are rather out of their reckoning. The
Indians can fight, Miss Mary, and fight like the devil; but we can lick
'em!"
He walked over to the fireplace, where--upon this chilly wet day, there
was a fire burning--and began to shake himself dry. Mary, following him
with her eyes, wondered if there was such another soldier in all Her
Majesty's dominions, and how soon he would be made General-in-Chief of
the Army of the Indus.
"Then you've not been wounded at all, Mr. Arundel?" she said, after a
pause.
"Oh, yes, I've been wounded; I got a bullet in my shoulder from an
Affghan musket, and I'm home on sick-leave."
This time he saw the expression of her face, and interpreted her look
of alarm.
"But I'm not ill, you know, Miss Marchmont," he said, laughing. "Our
fellows are very glad of a wound when they feel home-sick. The 8th come
home before long, all of 'em; and I've a twelvemonth's leave of
absence; and we're pretty sure to be ordered out again by the end of
that time, as I don't believe there's much chance of quiet over there."
"You will go out again!----"
Edward Arundel smiled at her mournful tone.
"To be sure, Miss Mary. I have my captaincy to win, you know; I'm only
a lieutenant, as yet."
It was only a twelvemonth's reprieve, after all, then, Mary thought. He
would go back again--to suffer, and to be wounded, and to die, perhaps.
But then, on the other hand, there was a twelvemonth's respite; and her
father might in that time prevail upon the young soldier to stay at
Marchmont Towers. It was such inexpressible happiness to see him once
more, to know that he was safe and well, that Mary could scarcely do
otherwise than see all things in a sunny light just now.
She ran to John Marchmont's study to tell him of the coming of this
welcome visitor; but she wept upon her father's shoulder before she
could explain who it was whose coming had made her so glad. Very few
friendships had broken the monotony of her solitary existence; and
Edward Arundel was the only chivalrous image she had ever known, out of
her books.
John Marchmont was scarcely less pleased than his child to see the man
who had befriended him in his poverty. Never has more heartfelt welcome
been given than that which greeted Edward Arundel at Marchmont Towers.
"You will stay with us, of course, my dear Arundel," John said; "you
will stop for September and the shooting. You know you promised you'd
make this your shooting-box; and we'll build the tennis-court. Heaven
knows, there's room enough for it in the great quadrangle; and there's
a billiard-room over this, though I'm afraid the table is out of order.
But we can soon set that right, can't we, Polly?"
"Yes, yes, papa; out of my pocket-money, if you like."
Mary Marchmont said this in all good faith. It was sometimes difficult
for her to remember that her father was really rich, and had no need of
help out of her pocket-money. The slender savings in her little purse
had often given him some luxury that he would not otherwise have had,
in the time gone by.
"You got my letter, then?" John said; "the letter in which I told
you----"
"That Marchmont Towers was yours. Yes, my dear old boy. That letter was
amongst a packet my agent brought me half-an-hour before I left
Calcutta. God bless you, dear old fellow; how glad I was to hear of it!
I've only been in England a fortnight. I went straight from Southampton
to Dangerfield to see my father and mother, stayed there little over
ten days, and then offended them all by running away. I reached
Swampington yesterday, slept at my uncle Hubert's, paid my respects to
my cousin Olivia, who is,--well, I've told you what she is,--and rode
over here this morning, much to the annoyance of the inhabitants of the
Rectory. So, you see, I've been doing nothing but offending people for
your sake, John; and for yours, Miss Mary. By-the-by, I've brought you
such a doll!"
A doll! Mary's pale face flushed a faint crimson. Did he think her
still a child, then, this soldier; did he think her only a silly child,
with no thought above a doll, when she would have gone out to India,
and braved every peril of that cruel country, to be his nurse and
comfort in fever and sickness, like the brave Sisters of Mercy she had
read of in some of her novels?
Edward Arundel saw that faint crimson glow lighting up in her face.
"I beg your pardon, Miss Marchmont," he said. "I was only joking; of
course you are a young lady now, almost grown up, you know. Can you
play chess?"
"No, Mr. Arundel."
"I am sorry for that; for I have brought you a set of chessmen that
once belonged to Dost Mahommed Khan. But I'll teach you the game, if
you like?"
"Oh, yes, Mr. Arundel; I should like it very, very much."
The young soldier could not help being amused by the little girl's
earnestness. She was about the same age as his sister Letitia; but, oh,
how widely different to that bouncing and rather wayward young lady,
who tore the pillow-lace upon her muslin frocks, rumpled her long
ringlets, rasped the skin off the sharp points of her elbows, by
repeated falls upon the gravel-paths at Dangerfield, and tormented a
long-suffering Swiss attendant, half-lady's-maid, half-governess, from
morning till night. No fold was awry in Mary Marchmont's simple
black-silk frock; no plait disarranged in the neat cambric tucker that
encircled the slender white throat. Intellect here reigned supreme.
Instead of the animal spirits of a thoughtless child, there was a
woman's loving carefulness for others, a woman's unselfishness and
devotion.
Edward Arundel did not understand all this, but I think he had a dim
comprehension of the greater part of it.
"She is a dear little thing," he thought, as he watched her clinging to
her father's arm; and then he began to talk about Marchmont Towers, and
insisted upon being shown over the house; and, perhaps for the first
time since the young heir had shot himself to death upon a bright
September morning in a stubble-field within earshot of the park, the
sound of merry laughter echoed through the long corridors, and
resounded in the unoccupied rooms.
Edward Arundel was in raptures with everything. "There never was such a
dear old place," he said. "'Gloomy?' 'dreary?' 'draughty?' pshaw! Cut a
few logs out of that wood at the back there, pile 'em up in the wide
chimneys, and set a light to 'em, and Marchmont Towers would be like a
baronial mansion at Christmas-time." He declared that every dingy
portrait he looked at was a Rubens or a Velasquez, or a Vandyke, a
Holbein, or a Lely.
"Look at that fur border to the old woman's black-velvet gown, John;
look at the colouring of the hands! Do you think anybody but Peter Paul
could have painted that? Do you see that girl with the blue-satin
stomacher and the flaxen ringlets?--one of your ancestresses, Miss
Mary, and very like you. If that isn't in Sir Peter Lely's best
style,--his earlier style, you know, before he was spoiled by royal
patronage, and got lazy,--I know nothing of painting."
The young soldier ran on in this manner, as he hurried his host from
room to room; now throwing open windows to look out at the wet
prospect; now rapping against the wainscot to find secret hiding-places
behind sliding panels; now stamping on the oak-flooring in the hope of
discovering a trap-door. He pointed out at least ten eligible sites for
the building of the tennis-court; he suggested more alterations and
improvements than a builder could have completed in a lifetime. The
place brightened under the influence of his presence, as a landscape
lights up under a burst of sudden sunshine breaking through a dull grey
sky.
Mary Marchmont did not wait for the removal of the table-cloth that
evening, but dined with her father and his friend in a snug
oak-panelled chamber, half-breakfast-room, half-library, which opened
out of the western drawing-room. How different Edward Arundel was to
all the rest of the world, Miss Marchmont thought; how gay, how bright,
how genial, how happy! The county families, mustered in their fullest
force, couldn't make such mirth amongst them as this young soldier
created in his single person.
The evening was an evening in fairy-land. Life was sometimes like the
last scene in a pantomime, after all, with rose-coloured cloud and
golden sunlight.
One of the Marchmont servants went over to Swampington early the next
day to fetch Mr. Arundel's portmanteaus from the Rectory; and after
dinner upon that second evening, Mary Marchmont took her seat opposite
Edward, and listened reverently while he explained to her the moves
upon the chessboard.
"So you don't know my cousin Olivia?" the young soldier said by-and-by.
"That's odd! I should have thought she would have called upon you long
before this."
Mary Marchmont shook her head.
"No," she said; "Miss Arundel has never been to see us; and I should so
like to have seen her, because she would have told me about you. Mr.
Arundel has called one or twice upon papa; but I have never seen him.
He is not our clergyman, you know; Marchmont Towers belongs to
Kemberling parish."
"To be sure; and Swampington is ten miles off. But, for all that, I
should have thought Olivia would have called upon you. I'll drive you
over to-morrow, if John thinks me whip enough to trust you with me, and
you shall see Livy. The Rectory's such a queer old place!"
Perhaps Mr. Marchmont was rather doubtful as to the propriety of
committing his little girl to Edward Arundel's charioteership for a
ten-mile drive upon a wretched road. Be it as it might, a lumbering
barouche, with a pair of over-fed horses, was ordered next morning,
instead of the high, old-fashioned gig which the soldier had proposed
driving; and the safety of the two young people was confided to a sober
old coachman, rather sulky at the prospect of a drive to Swampington so
soon after the rainy weather.
It does not rain always, even in this part of Lincolnshire; and the
July morning was bright and pleasant, the low hedges fragrant with
starry opal-tinted wild roses and waxen honeysuckle, the yellowing corn
waving in the light summer breeze. Mary assured her companion that she
had no objection whatever to the odour of cigar-smoke; so Mr. Arundel
lolled upon the comfortable cushions of the barouche, with his back to
the horses, smoking cheroots, and talking gaily, while Miss Marchmont
sat in the place of state opposite to him. A happy drive; a drive in a
fairy chariot through regions of fairyland, for ever and for ever to be
remembered by Mary Marchmont.
They left the straggling hedges and the yellowing corn behind them
by-and-by, as they drew near the outskirts of Swampington. The town
lies lower even than the surrounding country, flat and low as that
country is. A narrow river crawls at the base of a half-ruined wall,
which once formed part of the defences of the place. Black barges lie
at anchor here; and a stone bridge, guarded by a toll-house, spans the
river. Mr. Marchmont's carriage lumbered across this bridge, and under
an archway, low, dark, stony, and grim, into a narrow street of solid,
well-built houses, low, dark, stony, and grim, like the archway, but
bearing the stamp of reputable occupation. I believe the grass grew,
and still grows, in this street, as it does in all the other streets
and in the market-place of Swampington. They are all pretty much in the
same style, these streets,--all stony, narrow, dark, and grim; and they
wind and twist hither and thither, and in and out, in a manner utterly
bewildering to the luckless stranger, who, seeing that they are all
alike, has no landmarks for his guidance.
There are two handsome churches, both bearing an early date in the
history of Norman supremacy: one crowded into an inconvenient corner of
a back street, and choked by the houses built up round about it; the
other lying a little out of the town, upon a swampy waste looking
towards the sea, which flows within a mile of Swampington. Indeed,
there is no lack of water in that Lincolnshire borough. The river winds
about the outskirts of the town; unexpected creeks and inlets meet you
at every angle; shallow pools lie here and there about the marshy
suburbs; and in the dim distance the low line of the grey sea meets the
horizon.
But perhaps the positive ugliness of the town is something redeemed by
a vague air of romance and old-world mystery which pervades it. It is
an exceptional place, and somewhat interesting thereby. The great
Norman church upon the swampy waste, the scattered tombstones, bordered
by the low and moss-grown walls, make a picture which is apt to dwell
in the minds of those who look upon it, although it is by no means a
pretty picture. The Rectory lies close to the churchyard; and a
wicket-gate opens from Mr. Arundel's garden into a narrow pathway,
leading across a patch of tangled grass and through a lane of sunken
and lopsided tombstones, to the low vestry door. The Rectory itself is
a long irregular building, to which one incumbent after another has
built the additional chamber, or chimney, or porch, or bow-window,
necessary for his accommodation. There is very little garden in front
of the house, but a patch of lawn and shrubbery and a clump of old
trees at the back.
"It's not a pretty house, is it, Miss Marchmont?" asked Edward, as he
lifted his companion out of the carriage.
"No, not very pretty," Mary answered; "but I don't think any thing is
pretty in Lincolnshire. Oh, there's the sea!" she cried, looking
suddenly across the marshes to the low grey line in the distance. "How
I wish we were as near the sea at Marchmont Towers!"
The young lady had something of a romantic passion for the
wide-spreading ocean. It was an unknown region, that stretched far
away, and was wonderful and beautiful by reason of its solemn mystery.
All her Corsair stories were allied to that far, fathomless deep. The
white sail in the distance was Conrad's, perhaps; and he was speeding
homeward to find Medora dead in her lonely watch-tower, with fading
flowers upon her breast. The black hull yonder, with dirty canvas
spread to the faint breeze, was the bark of some terrible pirate bound
on rapine and ravage. (She was a coal-barge, I have no doubt, sailing
Londonward with her black burden.) Nymphs and Lurleis, Mermaids and
Mermen, and tiny water-babies with silvery tails, for ever splashing in
the sunshine, were all more or less associated with the long grey line
towards which Mary Marchmont looked with solemn, yearning eyes.
"We'll drive down to the seashore some morning, Polly," said Mr.
Arundel. He was beginning to call her Polly, now and then, in the easy
familiarity of their intercourse. "We'll spend a long day on the sands,
and I'll smoke cheroots while you pick up shells and seaweed."
Miss Marchmont clasped her hands in silent rapture. Her face was
irradiated by the new light of happiness. How good he was to her, this
brave soldier, who must undoubtedly be made Commander-in-Chief of the
Army of the Indus in a year or so!
Edward Arundel led his companion across the flagged way between the
iron gate of the Rectory garden and a half-glass door leading into the
hall. Out of this simple hall, only furnished with a couple of chairs,
a barometer, and an umbrella-stand, they went, without announcement,
into a low, old-fashioned room, half-study, half-parlour, where a young
lady was sitting at a table writing.
She rose as Edward opened the door, and came to meet him.
"At last!" she said; "I thought your rich friends engrossed all your
attention."
She paused, seeing Mary.
"This is Miss Marchmont, Olivia," said Edward; "the only daughter of my
old friend. You must be very fond of her, please; for she is a dear
little girl, and I know she means to love you."
Mary lifted her soft brown eyes to the face of the young lady, and then
dropped her eyelids suddenly, as if half-frightened by what she had
seen there.
What was it? What was it in Olivia Arundel's handsome face from which
those who looked at her so often shrank, repelled and disappointed?
Every line in those perfectly-modelled features was beautiful to look
at; but, as a whole, the face was not beautiful. Perhaps it was too
much like a marble mask, exquisitely chiselled, but wanting in variety
of expression. The handsome mouth was rigid; the dark grey eyes had a
cold light in them. The thick bands of raven-black hair were drawn
tightly off a square forehead, which was the brow of an intellectual
and determined man rather than of a woman. Yes; womanhood was the
something wanted in Olivia Arundel's face. Intellect, resolution,
courage, are rare gifts; but they are not the gifts whose tokens we
look for most anxiously in a woman's face. If Miss Arundel had been a
queen, her diadem would have become her nobly; and she might have been
a very great queen: but Heaven help the wretched creature who had
appealed from minor tribunals to _her_ mercy! Heaven help delinquents
of every kind whose last lingering hope had been in her compassion!
Perhaps Mary Marchmont vaguely felt something of all this. At any rate,
the enthusiasm with which she had been ready to regard Edward Arundel's
cousin cooled suddenly beneath the winter in that pale, quiet face.
Miss Arundel said a few words to her guest; kindly enough; but rather
too much as if she had been addressing a child of six. Mary, who was
accustomed to be treated as a woman, was wounded by her manner.
"How different she is from Edward!" thought Miss Marchmont. "I shall
never like her as I like him."
"So this is the pale-faced child who is to have Marchmont Towers
by-and-by," thought Miss Arundel; "and these rich friends are the
people for whom Edward stays away from us."
The lines about the rigid mouth grew harder, the cold light in the grey
eyes grew colder, as the young lady thought this.
It was thus that these two women met: while one was but a child in
years; while the other was yet in the early bloom of womanhood: these
two, who were predestined to hate each other, and inflict suffering
upon each other in the days that were to come. It was thus that they
thought of one another; each with an unreasonable dread, an undefined
aversion gathering in her breast.
* * * * *
Six weeks passed, and Edward Arundel kept his promise of shooting the
partridges on the Marchmont preserves. The wood behind the Towers, and
the stubbled corn-fields on the home-farm, bristled with game. The
young soldier heartily enjoyed himself through that delicious first
week in September; and came home every afternoon, with a heavy game-bag
and a light heart, to boast of his prowess before Mary and her father.
The young man was by this time familiar with every nook and corner of
Marchmont Towers; and the builders were already at work at the
tennis-court which John had promised to erect for his friend's
pleasure. The site ultimately chosen was a bleak corner of the eastern
front, looking to the wood; but as Edward declared the spot in every
way eligible, John had no inclination to find fault with his friend's
choice. There was other work for the builders; for Mr. Arundel had
taken a wonderful fancy to a ruined boat-house upon the brink of the
river; and this boat-house was to be rebuilt and restored, and made
into a delightful pavilion, in the upper chambers of which Mary might
sit with her father in the hot summer weather, while Mr. Arundel kept a
couple of trim wherries in the recesses below.
So, you see, the young man made himself very much at home, in his own
innocent, boyish fashion, at Marchmont Towers. But as he had brought
life and light to the old Lincolnshire mansion, nobody was inclined to
quarrel with him for any liberties which he might choose to take: and
every one looked forward sorrowfully to the dark days before Christmas,
at which time he was under a promise to return to Dangerfield Park;
there to spend the remainder of his leave of absence.