AT THORNLEIGH.
The midsummer holidays began at last, and Mr. Darrell came in person to
fetch his daughter, much to her delight. She was not to return to
school any more unless she liked, he told her. Her new mamma was most
anxious to receive her, and she could have masters at Thornleigh to
complete her education, if it were not already finished.
Her eyes were full of tears when she came to tell me this, and carry me
off to the drawing-room to introduce me to her father, an introduction
she insisted upon making in spite of my entreaties,--for I was rather
shy at this period of my life, and dreaded an encounter with a stranger.
Mr. Darrell received me most graciously. He was a tall fine-looking
man, very like the photograph in Milly's bedroom, and I detected the
hard look about the mouth which I had noticed in both portraits. He
seemed remarkably fond of his daughter; and I have never seen a
prettier picture than she made as she stood beside him, clinging to his
arm, and looking lovingly up at him with her dark hazel eyes.
He asked me where I was to spend my holidays; and on hearing that I was
to stay at Albury Lodge, asked whether I would like to come to
Thornleigh with Milly for the midsummer vacation. My darling clapped
her hands gaily as he made this offer, and cried:
'O yes, Mary, you will come, won't you?--You dear kind papa, that is
just like you, always able to guess what one wishes. There is nothing
in the world I should like better than to have Mary at Thornleigh.'
'Then you have only to pack a box with all possible expedition, and to
come away with us, Miss Crofton,' said Mr. Darrell; 'the train starts
in an hour and a half. I can only give you an hour.'
I thanked him as well as I could--awkwardly enough, I daresay--for his
kindness, and ran away to ask Miss Bagshot's consent to the visit. This
she gave readily, in spite of some objections suggested by Miss Susan,
and I had nothing more to do than to pack my few dresses--my two
coloured muslins, a white dress for festive occasions, a black-silk
dress which was preëminently my 'best,' and some print
morning-dresses--wondering as I packed them how these things would pass
current among the grandeurs of Thornleigh. All this was finished well
within the hour, and I put on my bonnet and shawl, and ran
down--flushed with hurry and excitement, and very happy--to join my
friends in the drawing-room.
Miss Bagshot was there, talking of her attachment to her sweet young
friend, and her regret at losing her. Mr. Darrell cut these
lamentations short when he found I was ready, and we drove off to the
station in the fly that had brought him to Albury Lodge.
I looked at the little station to-day with a very different feeling
from that dull despondency which had possessed me six months before,
when I arrived there in the bleak January weather. The thought of five
weeks' respite from the monotonous routine of Albury Lodge was almost
perfect happiness. I did not forget those I loved at home, or cease to
regret the poverty that prevented my going home for the holidays; but
since this was impossible, nothing could have been pleasanter than the
idea of the visit I was going to pay.
Throughout the journey Mr. Darrell was all that was gracious and kind.
He talked a good deal of his wife; dwelling much upon her
accomplishments and amiability, and assuring his daughter again and
again that she could not fail to love her.
'I was a little bit of a coward in the business, I confess, Milly,' he
said, in the midst of this talk, 'and hadn't courage to tell you
anything till the deed was done; and then I thought it was as well to
let Julian make the announcement.'
'You ought to have trusted me better, papa,' Milly said tenderly; and I
knew what perfect self-abnegation there was in the happy smile with
which she gave him her hand.
'And you are not angry with me, my darling?' he asked.
'Angry with you, papa? as if I had any right to be angry with you! Only
try to love me a little, as you used to do, and I shall be quite happy.'
'I shall never love you less, my dear.'
The journey was not a long one; and the country through which we passed
was very fair to look upon in the bright June afternoon. The landscape
changed when we were within about thirty miles of our destination: the
fertile farmlands and waving fields of green corn gave place to an open
moor, and I felt from far off the fresh breath of the ocean. This broad
undulating moorland was new to me, and I thought there was a wild kind
of beauty in its loneliness. As for Milly, she looked out at the moor
with rapture, and strained her eyes to catch the first glimpse of the
hills about Thornleigh--those hills of which she had talked to me so
often in her little room at school.
The station we had to stop at was ten miles from Mr. Darrell's house,
and a barouche-and-pair was waiting for us in the sunny road outside.
We drove along a road that crossed the moor, until we came to a little
village of scattered houses, with a fine old church--at one end of
which an ancient sacristy seemed mouldering slowly to decay. We drove
past the gates of two or three rather important houses, lying
half-hidden in their gardens, and then turned sharply off into a road
that went up a hill, nearly at the top of which we came to a pair of
noble old carved iron gates, surmounted with a coat-of-arms, and
supported on each side by massive stone pillars, about which the ivy
twined lovingly.
An old man came out of a pretty rustic-looking lodge and opened these
gates, and we drove through an avenue of some extent, which led
straight to the front of the house, the aspect of which delighted me.
It was very old and massively built, and had quite a baronial look, I
thought. There was a wide stone terrace with ponderous moss-grown stone
balustrades round three sides of it, and at each angle a broad flight
of steps leading down to a second terrace, with sloping green banks
that melted into the turf of the lawn. The house stood on the summit of
a hill, and from one side commanded a noble view of the sea.
A lady came out of the curious old stone porch as the carriage drove
up, and stood at the top of the terrace steps waiting for us. I guessed
immediately that this must be Mrs. Darrell.
Milly hung back a little shyly, as her father led her up the steps with
her hand through his arm. She was very pale, and I could see that she
was trembling. Mrs. Darrell came forward to her quickly, and kissed her.
'My darling Emily,' she cried, 'I am so delighted to see you at
last.--O William, you did not deceive me when you promised me a
beautiful daughter.'
Milly blushed, and smiled at this compliment, but still clung to her
father, with shy downcast eyes.
I had time to look at Mrs. Darrell while this introduction was being
made. She was not by any means a beautiful woman, but she was what I
suppose would have been called eminently interesting. She was tall and
slim, very graceful-looking, with a beautiful throat and a well-shaped
head. Her features, with the exception of her eyes, were in no way
remarkable; but those were sufficiently striking to give character to a
face that might otherwise have been insipid. They were large luminous
gray eyes, with black lashes, and rather strongly-marked brows of a
much darker brown than her hair. That was of a nondescript shade,
neither auburn nor chestnut, and with little light or colour in its
soft silky masses; but it seemed to harmonise very well with her pale
complexion. Lavater has warned us to distrust any one whose hair and
eyebrows are of a different colour. I remembered this as I looked at
Mrs. Darrell.
She was dressed in white; and I fancied the transparent muslin, with no
other ornament than a lilac ribbon at the waist, was peculiarly
becoming to her slender figure and delicate face. Her husband seemed to
think so too, for he looked at her with a fond admiring glance as he
offered her his arm to return to the house.
'I mustn't forget to introduce Miss Crofton to you, Augusta,' he said;
'a school friend of Milly's, who has kindly accepted my invitation to
spend the holidays with her.'
Mrs. Darrell gave me her hand; but I fancied that she did so rather
coldly, and I had an uneasy sense that I was not very welcome to the
new mistress of Thornleigh.
'You will find your old rooms all ready for you, Milly,' she said; 'I
suppose we had better put Miss Crofton in the blue room--next yours?'
'If you please, Mrs. Darrell.'
'What, Milly, won't you call me mamma?'
Milly was silent for a few moments, with a pained expression in her
face.
'Pray, forgive me,' she said in a low voice; 'I cannot call any one by
that name.'
Augusta Darrell kissed her again silently.
'It shall be as you wish, dear,' she said, after a pause.
A rosy-cheeked, pleasant-looking girl, who had been accustomed to wait
on Milly in the old time, came forward to meet us, and ran before us to
our rooms, expressing her delight at her young lady's return all the
way she went.
The rooms were very pretty, and were situated in that portion of the
house which looked towards the sea. There was a sitting-room, brightly
furnished with some light kind of wood, and with chintz hangings all
over rose-buds and butterflies. This had been Milly's schoolroom, and
there was a good many books in two pretty-looking bookcases on each
side of the fireplace. Besides these, there were some curious old
cabinets full of shells and china. It was altogether the prettiest,
most homelike room one could imagine.
Opening out of this, there was a large airy bedroom, with three windows
commanding that glorious view of moorland and sea; and beyond that, a
dainty little dressing-room. The next door in the corridor opened into
the room that had been allotted to me; a large comfortable-looking
room, in which there was an old-fashioned mahogany four-post bed with
blue-damask curtains.
I went to Milly's dressing-room when my own simple toilet was finished,
and stood by the open window talking to her while she arranged her
hair. She dismissed her little maid directly I went into the room, and
I felt she had something to say to me.
'Well, Mary,' she began at once, 'what do you think of her?'
'Of Mrs. Darrell?'
'Of course.'
'What opinion can I possibly form about her, after seeing her for three
minutes, Milly? I think she is very elegant-looking. That is the only
idea I have about her yet.'
'Do you think she looks _true_, Mary? Do you think she has married papa
because she loves him?'
'My dear child, how can I tell that? She is a great many years younger
than your papa, but I do not see that the difference between them need
be any real hindrance to her loving him. He is a man whom any woman
might care for, I should think; to say nothing of her natural gratitude
towards the man who has rescued her from a position of dependence.'
'Gratitude is all nonsense,' Miss Darrell answered impatiently. 'I want
to know that my father is loved as he deserves to be loved. I shall
never tolerate that woman unless I can feel sure of that.'
'I believe you are prejudiced against her already, Milly,' I said
reproachfully.
'I daresay I am, Mary. I daresay I feel unjustly about her; but I don't
like her face.'
'What is there in her face that you don't like?'
'O, I can't tell you that--an undefinable something. I have a sort of
conviction that she and I can never love each other.'
'It is rather hard upon Mrs. Darrell to begin with such a feeling as
that, Milly.'
'I can't help it. Of course I shall try to do my duty to her, for
papa's sake, and I shall do my best to conquer all these unchristian
feelings. But we cannot command our hearts, you know, Mary, and I don't
think I shall ever love my stepmother.'
She took me down to the drawing-room after this. It was half-past six,
and we were to dine at seven. The drawing-room was a long room, with
five windows opening on to the terrace, an old-fashioned-looking room
with panelled walls and a fine arched ceiling. The wainscot was painted
white, with gilt mouldings, and the cornice and architraves of the
doors were elaborately carved. The furniture was white-and-gold like
the walls, and in that spurious classical style which prevailed during
the first French Empire. The window-curtains and coverings of sofas and
chairs were of dark-green velvet.
A gentleman was standing in one of the open windows looking out at the
garden. He turned as Milly and I went in, and I recognised Mr.
Stormont. He came forward to shake hands with his cousin, and smiled
his peculiar slow smile at her expression of surprise.
'You didn't know I was here, Milly?'
'No, indeed; I had no idea of seeing you.'
'I wonder your father did not tell you of my visit. I came over this
morning for a fortnight's holiday. I've been working a little harder
than usual lately, and my uncle is good enough to say I have earned a
rest.'
'I wonder you don't go abroad for a change.'
'I don't care about a change. I had much rather come to Thornleigh.'
He looked at her very earnestly as he said this. I had been sure of it
that afternoon when we all three sat in the summer-house at Albury
Lodge, but I could see that Milly herself had no idea of the truth.
'Well, Milly, what do you think of your new mamma?' he asked presently.
'I had rather not tell you yet.'
'Humph! that hardly sounds favourable to the lady. She seems to me a
very charming person; but she is not my stepmother, and, of course,
that makes a difference. Your father is intensely devoted.'
Mr. Darrell came into the room a few minutes after this, and his wife
followed him almost immediately. Milly placed herself next her father,
and contrived to absorb his attention, not quite to the satisfaction of
the elder lady, I fancied. Those bright gray eyes flashed upon my
darling with a brief look of anger, which changed in the next moment to
quiet watchfulness.
Mrs. Darrell stood by one of the tables, idly turning over some books
and papers, and finding me seated near her, began to talk to me
presently in a very gracious manner, asking me how I liked Thornleigh,
and a few other questions of a stereotyped kind; but even while she
talked those watchful eyes were always turned towards the window where
the father and daughter stood side by side. Mr. Stormont came over to
her while she was talking to me, and joined in the conversation; in the
midst of which a grave gray-haired old butler came to announce dinner.
Mr. Stormont offered his arm to the lady of the house, while Mr.
Darrell gave one arm to me and the other to his daughter; and we went
down a long passage, at the end of which was the dining-room, a noble
old room, with dark oak panelling and a great many pictures by the old
masters, which were, no doubt, as valuable as they were dingy. We dined
at an oval table, prettily decorated with flowers and with some very
curious old silver.
There was a good deal of talk at dinner, in which I could take very
little part. Mr. and Mrs. Darrell talked to Julian Stormont of their
travels; and I must confess the lady talked well, with no affectation
of enthusiasm, and with an evident knowledge and appreciation of the
things she was speaking about. I envied her those wanderings in sunny
foreign lands, even though they had been made in the company of an
invalid dowager, and I wondered whether she would be happy in a settled
existence at Thornleigh.
After dinner Milly took me out upon the terrace, and from thence we
went to explore the gardens. We had not been out long before Julian
Stormont came to join us. We had been talking pleasantly enough till he
appeared, but his coming seemed to make us both silent, and he himself
had a thoughtful air. I watched his pale face as he walked beside us in
the twilight, and was again struck by the careworn look about the brow
and the resolute expression of the mouth.
He was very fond of Milly. Of that fact there could be no possible
doubt; and I think he had already begun to suffer keenly from the
knowledge that his love was unreturned. That he hoped against hope at
this time--that he counted fully on his power to win her in the future,
I know. He was too wise to precipitate matters by any untimely avowal
of his feelings. He waited with a quiet resolute patience which was a
part of his nature.
Of course we talked a little, but it was in a straggling, desultory
kind of way; and I think it was a relief to all of us when we finished
the round of the gardens and went in through one of the drawing-room
windows. The room was lighted with lamps and candles placed about upon
the tables, and Mrs. Darrell was sitting near her husband, employed
upon some airy scrap of fancy-work, while he read his _Times_.
He asked for some music soon after we went in, and she rose to obey him
with a very charming air of submission. She played magnificently, with
a power and style that were quite new to me, for I had heard no
professional performers. She sang an Italian scena afterwards, in a
rich mezzo-soprano, and with a kind of suppressed passion that
impressed me deeply. I scarcely wondered, after hearing her play and
sing, that Mr. Darrell had been fascinated by her. These gifts of hers
were in themselves sufficient to subjugate a man who really cared for
music.
Milly was charmed into forgetfulness of her prejudices. She went over
to the piano and kissed her stepmother.
'Papa told me how clever you were,' she said; 'but he did not tell me
you were a genius.'
Mrs. Darrell received the compliment very modestly, and then tried to
persuade Milly to sing or play; but the girl declined resolutely.
Nothing could induce her to touch the piano after that brilliant
performance.
The next day and several days passed very quietly, and in a kind of
monotonous comfort. The rector of the parish dined with us one day, and
on another a neighbouring squire with his wife and three daughters.
Milly and I spent a good deal of our time in the gardens and on the
sea-shore, with Julian Stormont for our companion, while Mr. and Mrs.
Darrell rode or drove together. My darling could see that she was not
expected to join them in these rides and drives, and I think this
confirmed her idea that her father was in a manner lost to her.
'I must try to be satisfied with this new state of things, Mary,' she
said, with a sigh of resignation. 'If my father is happy, I ought to be
contented. But O, my dear, if you could have seen us together a year
ago, you would know how much I have lost.'
I had been at Thornleigh a little more than a week, when Mr. Darrell
one morning proposed a drive to a place called Cumber Priory, which was
one of the show-houses of the neighbourhood. It was a very old place,
he said, and had been one of the earliest monastic settlements in that
part of the country. Milly and her father and her cousin had been there
a great many times, and the visit was proposed for the gratification of
Mrs. Darrell and myself.
She assented graciously, as she always did to every proposition of her
husband's, and we started soon after breakfast in the barouche, with
Julian Stormont on horseback. The drive was delightful; for, after
leaving the hilly district about Thornleigh, our road lay through a
wood, where the trees were of many hundred years' growth. I recognised
groups of oak and beech that I had seen among the sketches in Milly's
portfolio.
On the other side of the wood we came to some dilapidated-looking
gates, with massive stone escutcheons on the great square pillars.
There was a lodge, but it was evidently unoccupied, and Mr. Darrell's
footman got down from the box to open the gates. Within we made the
circuit of a neglected lawn, divided from a park by a sunk fence,
across which some cattle stared at us in a lazy manner as we drove past
them. The house was a long low building with heavily mullioned windows,
and was flanked by gothic towers. Most of the windows had closed
shutters, and the place had altogether a deserted look.
'The Priory has not been occupied for several years,' Mr. Darrell said,
as if in answer to my thoughts as I looked up at the closed windows.
'The family have been too poor to live in it in anything like their old
state. There is only one member of the old family remaining now, and he
leads a wandering kind of life abroad, I believe.'
'What has made them so poor?' asked Mrs. Darrell.
'Extravagant habits, I suppose,' answered her husband, with an
expressive shrug of the shoulders. 'The Egertons have always been a
wild race.'
'Egerton!' Mrs. Darrell repeated; 'I thought the name of these people
was Cumber.'
'No; Cumber is only the name of the place. It has been in the Egerton
family for centuries.'
'Indeed!'
I was seated exactly opposite her, and I was surprised by the strange
startled look in her face as she repeated the name of Egerton. That
look passed away in the next moment, and left her with her usual air of
languid indifference; a placid kind of listlessness which harmonised
very well with her pale complexion and delicate features. She was not a
woman from whom one expected much animation.
The low iron-studded door of the Priory was opened by a decent-looking
old woman of that species which seems created expressly for the showing
of old houses. She divined our errand at once, and as soon as we were
in the hall, began her catalogue of pictures and curiosities in the
usual mechanical way, while we looked about us, always fixing our eyes
on the wrong object, and more bewildered than enlightened by her
description of the chief features of the place.
We went from room to room, the dame throwing open the shutters of the
deep-set gothic windows, and letting in a flood of sunshine upon the
faded tapestries and tarnished picture-frames. It was a noble old
place, and the look of decay upon everything was more in accord with
its grandeur than any modern splendour could have been.
We had been through all the rooms on the ground floor, most of which
opened into one another, and were returning towards the hall, when Mr.
Darrell missed his wife, and sent me back to look for her in one
direction, while he went in another. I hurried through three or four
empty rooms, until I came to a small one at the end of the house, and
here I found her. I had not noticed this room much, for it was
furnished in a more modern style than the rest of the house, and the
old housekeeper had made very light of it, hurrying us back to look at
some armour over the chimneypiece in the next room. It was her master's
study, she had said, and was not generally shown to strangers.
It was a small dark-looking room, lined with dingily-bound books upon
heavy carved-oak shelves, and with no other furniture than a massive
writing-table and three or four arm-chairs. Over the mantelpiece, which
was modern and low, there was a portrait of a young man with a dark
handsome face, and it was at this that Augusta Darrell was looking. I
could see her face in profile as she stood upon the hearth with her
clenched hand upon the mantelpiece, and I had never before seen such an
expression in any human countenance.
What was it? Despair, remorse, regret? I know not; but it was a look of
keenest anguish, of unutterable sorrow. The face was deadly pale, the
great gray eyes looking upwards at the portrait, the lips locked
together rigidly.
She did not hear my footstep; it was only when I spoke to her that she
turned towards me with a stony face, and asked what I wanted.
I told her that Mr. Darrell had sent me.
'I was coming this instant,' she said, resuming her usual manner with
an effort. 'I had only loitered to look at that portrait. A fine face,
is it not, Miss Crofton?'
'A handsome one, at any rate,' I answered doubtfully, for that dark
haughty countenance struck me as rather repellent than attractive.
'That's as much as to say you don't think it a good face. Well, perhaps
you are right. It reminded me of some one I knew a long time ago, and
was rather interesting to me on that account. And then I fell into a
kind of a reverie, and forgot that my dear husband might miss me.'
He came into the room as she was saying this. She told him that she had
stopped to look at the portrait, and asked whose it was.
'It is a likeness of Angus Egerton, the present owner of the Priory,'
Mr. Darrell answered; 'and a very good likeness, too--of as bad a man
as ever lived, I believe,' he added in a lower voice.
'A bad man?'
'Yes; he broke his mother's heart.'
'In what manner?'
'He fell in love with a girl of low birth, whom he met in the course of
a pedestrian tour in the West of England, and was going to marry her, I
believe, when Mrs. Egerton got wind of the affair. She was a very proud
woman--one of the most resolute masculine-minded women I ever knew. She
went down into Devonshire where the girl lived immediately, and by some
means or other prevented the marriage. How it was done I never heard;
but it was not until a year afterwards that Angus Egerton discovered
his mother's part in the business. He came down to the Priory suddenly
and unexpectedly at a late hour one night, and walked straight to his
mother's room. I have heard that old woman who has been showing us the
house describe his ghastly face--she was Mrs. Egerton's maid in those
days--as he pushed her aside and went into the room where his mother
was sitting. There was a dreadful scene between them, and at the end of
it Angus Egerton walked out of the house, swearing never again to enter
it while his mother lived. He has kept his word. Mrs. Egerton never
crossed the threshold after that night, and refused to see anybody
except her servants and her doctor. She lived this lonely kind of life
for nearly three years, and then died of some slow wasting disease, for
which the doctor could find no name.'
'And where did Mr. Egerton go after leaving her that night?'
'He slept at a little inn at Cumber, and went back to London next
morning. He left England soon after that, and has lived abroad ever
since.'
'And you think him a very bad man?'
'I consider his conduct to his mother a sufficient evidence of that.'
'He may have believed himself deeply wronged.'
'He must have known that she had acted in his interests when she
prevented his committing the folly of a low marriage. She was his
mother, and had been a most devoted and indulgent mother.'
'And in the end contrived to break his heart--to say nothing of the
girl who loved him, who was of course a piece of common clay, not worth
consideration.'
'I did not think you had so much romance, Augusta,' said Mr. Darrell,
laughing; 'I suppose it is natural for a woman to take the part of
unfortunate lovers, however foolish the affair may be. But I believe
this Devonshire girl was quite unworthy of an honourable attachment on
the part of any man. You see I knew and liked Mrs. Egerton, and I know
how she loved her son. I cannot forgive him his conduct to her; nor
have the reports of his life abroad been by any means favourable to his
character. His career seems to have been a very wild and dissipated
one.'
'And he has never married?'
'No, he has never married.'
'He has been true, at least,' Mrs. Darrell said in a low thoughtful
tone.
We had lingered in the little study while her husband had told his
story. We went back to the hall now, and found Milly and Mr. Stormont
looking rather listlessly at the old portraits of the Egerton race. I
was anxious to see a picture of the last Mrs. Egerton, after what I had
heard about her, and, at my request, the housekeeper showed me one in
the drawing-room.
She was very handsome, and wonderfully like her son. I could fancy
those two haughty spirits in opposition.
We spent another hour looking over the rest of the house--old tapestry,
old pictures, old china, old furniture, secret staircases, carved
chimneypieces, muniment chests, and the usual objects of interest to be
found in such a place. After that we walked a little in the neglected
garden, where there were old holly hedges that had grown high and wild
for want of clipping, and where a curious old sun-dial had fallen down
upon the grass in a forlorn way. The paths were all green and
moss-grown, and the roses were almost choked with bindweed. I saw Mrs.
Darrell gather one of these roses and put it in her breast. It was the
first time I have ever seen her pluck a flower, though there was a
wealth of roses at Thornleigh.
So ended our visit to Cumber Priory; a place that was destined to be
very memorable to some of us in the time to come.