Constitution--were roused by voices of featherless beings all round
them. They opened their eyes, under protest, and saw instruments of
destruction attacking the creepers. Now in one direction, and now in
another, those instruments let in on the summer-house the horrid light
of day. But the Owls were equal to the occasion. They ruffled their
feathers, and cried, “No surrender!” The featherless beings plied their
work cheerfully, and answered, “Reform!” The creepers were torn down
this way and that. The horrid daylight poured in brighter and brighter.
The Owls had barely time to pass a new resolution, namely, “That we do
stand by the Constitution,” when a ray of the outer sunlight flashed
into their eyes, and sent them flying headlong to the nearest shade.
There they sat winking, while the summer-house was cleared of the rank
growth that had choked it up, while the rotten wood-work was renewed,
while all the murky place was purified with air and light. And when the
world saw it, and said, “Now we shall do!” the Owls shut their eyes
in pious remembrance of the darkness, and answered, “My lords and
gentlemen, the Constitution is destroyed!”
CHAPTER THE SECOND.
THE GUESTS.
Who was responsible for the reform of the summer-house? The new tenant
at Windygates was responsible.
And who was the new tenant?
Come, and see.
In the spring of eighteen hundred and sixty-eight the summer-house had
been the dismal dwelling-place of a pair of owls. In the autumn of the
same year the summer-house was the lively gathering-place of a crowd
of ladies and gentlemen, assembled at a lawn party--the guests of the
tenant who had taken Windygates.
The scene--at the opening of the party--was as pleasant to look at as
light and beauty and movement could make it.
Inside the summer-house the butterfly-brightness of the women in their
summer dresses shone radiant out of the gloom shed round it by the
dreary modern clothing of the men. Outside the summer-house, seen
through three arched openings, the cool green prospect of a lawn led
away, in the distance, to flower-beds and shrubberies, and, farther
still, disclosed, through a break in the trees, a grand stone house
which closed the view, with a fountain in front of it playing in the
sun.
They were half of them laughing, they were all of them talking--the
comfortable hum of their voices was at its loudest; the cheery pealing
of the laughter was soaring to its highest notes--when one dominant
voice, rising clear and shrill above all the rest, called imperatively
for silence. The moment after, a young lady stepped into the vacant
space in front of the summer-house, and surveyed the throng of guests as
a general in command surveys a regiment under review.
She was young, she was pretty, she was plump, she was fair. She was not
the least embarrassed by her prominent position. She was dressed in the
height of the fashion. A hat, like a cheese-plate, was tilted over her
forehead. A balloon of light brown hair soared, fully inflated, from the
crown of her head. A cataract of beads poured over her bosom. A pair of
cock-chafers in enamel (frightfully like the living originals) hung at
her ears. Her scanty skirts shone splendid with the blue of heaven. Her
ankles twinkled in striped stockings. Her shoes were of the sort called
“Watteau.” And her heels were of the height at which men shudder, and
ask themselves (in contemplating an otherwise lovable woman), “Can this
charming person straighten her knees?”
The young lady thus presenting herself to the general view was Miss
Blanche Lundie--once the little rosy Blanche whom the Prologue has
introduced to the reader. Age, at the present time, eighteen. Position,
excellent. Money, certain. Temper, quick. Disposition, variable. In a
word, a child of the modern time--with the merits of the age we live in,
and the failings of the age we live in--and a substance of sincerity and
truth and feeling underlying it all.
“Now then, good people,” cried Miss Blanche, “silence, if you please! We
are going to choose sides at croquet. Business, business, business!”
Upon this, a second lady among the company assumed a position of
prominence, and answered the young person who had just spoken with a
look of mild reproof, and in a tone of benevolent protest.
The second lady was tall, and solid, and five-and-thirty. She presented
to the general observation a cruel aquiline nose, an obstinate straight
chin, magnificent dark hair and eyes, a serene splendor of fawn-colored
apparel, and a lazy grace of movement which was attractive at
first sight, but inexpressibly monotonous and wearisome on a longer
acquaintance. This was Lady Lundie the Second, now the widow (after four
months only of married life) of Sir Thomas Lundie, deceased. In other
words, the step-mother of Blanche, and the enviable person who had taken
the house and lands of Windygates.
“My dear,” said Lady Lundie, “words have their meanings--even on a young
lady’s lips. Do you call Croquet, ‘business?’”
“You don’t call it pleasure, surely?” said a gravely ironical voice in
the back-ground of the summer-house.
The ranks of the visitors parted before the last speaker, and disclosed
to view, in the midst of that modern assembly, a gentleman of the bygone
time.
The manner of this gentleman was distinguished by a pliant grace and
courtesy unknown to the present generation. The attire of this gentleman
was composed of a many-folded white cravat, a close-buttoned blue
dress-coat, and nankeen trousers with gaiters to match, ridiculous
to the present generation. The talk of this gentleman ran in an
easy flow--revealing an independent habit of mind, and exhibiting a
carefully-polished capacity for satirical retort--dreaded and disliked
by the present generation. Personally, he was little and wiry and
slim--with a bright white head, and sparkling black eyes, and a wry
twist of humor curling sharply at the corners of his lips. At his lower
extremities, he exhibited the deformity which is popularly known as “a
club-foot.” But he carried his lameness, as he carried his years, gayly.
He was socially celebrated for his ivory cane, with a snuff-box artfully
let into the knob at the top--and he was socially dreaded for a hatred
of modern institutions, which expressed itself in season and out of
season, and which always showed the same, fatal knack of hitting smartly
on the weakest place. Such was Sir Patrick Lundie; brother of the late
baronet, Sir Thomas; and inheritor, at Sir Thomas’s death, of the title
and estates.
Miss Blanche--taking no notice of her step-mother’s reproof, or of her
uncle’s commentary on it--pointed to a table on which croquet mallets
and balls were laid ready, and recalled the attention of the company to
the matter in hand.
“I head one side, ladies and gentlemen,” she resumed. “And Lady Lundie
heads the other. We choose our players turn and turn about. Mamma has
the advantage of me in years. So mamma chooses first.”
With a look at her step-daughter--which, being interpreted, meant, “I
would send you back to the nursery, miss, if I could!”--Lady Lundie
turned and ran her eye over her guests. She had evidently made up her
mind, beforehand, what player to pick out first.
“I choose Miss Silvester,” she said--with a special emphasis laid on the
name.
At that there was another parting among the crowd. To us (who know her),
it was Anne who now appeared. Strangers, who saw her for the first
time, saw a lady in the prime of her life--a lady plainly dressed in
unornamented white--who advanced slowly, and confronted the mistress of
the house.
A certain proportion--and not a small one--of the men at the lawn-party
had been brought there by friends who were privileged to introduce
them. The moment she appeared every one of those men suddenly became
interested in the lady who had been chosen first.
“That’s a very charming woman,” whispered one of the strangers at the
house to one of the friends of the house. “Who is she?”
The friend whispered back.
“Miss Lundie’s governess--that’s all.”
The moment during which the question was put and answered was also the
moment which brought Lady Lundie and Miss Silvester face to face in the
presence of the company.
The stranger at the house looked at the two women, and whispered again.
“Something wrong between the lady and the governess,” he said.
The friend looked also, and answered, in one emphatic word:
“Evidently!”
There are certain women whose influence over men is an unfathomable
mystery to observers of their own sex. The governess was one of those
women. She had inherited the charm, but not the beauty, of her unhappy
mother. Judge her by the standard set up in the illustrated gift-books
and the print-shop windows--and the sentence must have inevitably
followed. “She has not a single good feature in her face.”
There was nothing individually remarkable about Miss Silvester, seen in
a state of repose. She was of the average height. She was as well made
as most women. In hair and complexion she was neither light nor dark,
but provokingly neutral just between the two. Worse even than this,
there were positive defects in her face, which it was impossible to
deny. A nervous contraction at one corner of her mouth drew up the
lips out of the symmetrically right line, when, they moved. A nervous
uncertainty in the eye on the same side narrowly escaped presenting the
deformity of a “cast.” And yet, with these indisputable drawbacks, here
was one of those women--the formidable few--who have the hearts of men
and the peace of families at their mercy. She moved--and there was some
subtle charm, Sir, in the movement, that made you look back, and suspend
your conversation with your friend, and watch her silently while she
walked. She sat by you and talked to you--and behold, a sensitive
something passed into that little twist at the corner of the mouth, and
into that nervous uncertainty in the soft gray eye, which turned defect
into beauty--which enchained your senses--which made your nerves thrill
if she touched you by accident, and set your heart beating if you looked
at the same book with her, and felt her breath on your face. All this,
let it be well understood, only happened if you were a man.
If you saw her with the eyes of a woman, the results were of quite
another kind. In that case you merely turned to your nearest female
friend, and said, with unaffected pity for the other sex, “What _can_
the men see in her!”
The eyes of the lady of the house and the eyes of the governess met,
with marked distrust on either side. Few people could have failed to
see what the stranger and the friend had noticed alike--that there was
something smoldering under the surface here. Miss Silvester spoke first.
“Thank you, Lady Lundie,” she said. “I would rather not play.”
Lady Lundie assumed an extreme surprise which passed the limits of
good-breeding.
“Oh, indeed?” she rejoined, sharply. “Considering that we are all here
for the purpose of playing, that seems rather remarkable. Is any thing
wrong, Miss Silvester?”
A flush appeared on the delicate paleness of Miss Silvester’s face.
But she did her duty as a woman and a governess. She submitted, and so
preserved appearances, for that time.
“Nothing is the matter,” she answered. “I am not very well this morning.
But I will play if you wish it.”
“I do wish it,” answered Lady Lundie.
Miss Silvester turned aside toward one of the entrances into the
summer-house. She waited for events, looking out over the lawn, with a
visible inner disturbance, marked over the bosom by the rise and fall of
her white dress.
It was Blanche’s turn to select the next player.
In some preliminary uncertainty as to her choice she looked about among
the guests, and caught the eye of a gentleman in the front ranks. He
stood side by side with Sir Patrick--a striking representative of the
school that is among us--as Sir Patrick was a striking representative of
the school that has passed away.
The modern gentleman was young and florid, tall and strong. The parting
of his curly Saxon locks began in the center of his forehead, traveled
over the top of his head, and ended, rigidly-central, at the ruddy nape
of his neck. His features were as perfectly regular and as perfectly
unintelligent as human features can be. His expression preserved an
immovable composure wonderful to behold. The muscles of his brawny arms
showed through the sleeves of his light summer coat. He was deep in the
chest, thin in the flanks, firm on the legs--in two words a magnificent
human animal, wrought up to the highest pitch of physical development,
from head to foot. This was Mr. Geoffrey Delamayn--commonly called “the
honorable;” and meriting that distinction in more ways than one. He was
honorable, in the first place, as being the son (second son) of that
once-rising solicitor, who was now Lord Holchester. He was honorable,
in the second place, as having won the highest popular distinction which
the educational system of modern England can bestow--he had pulled the
stroke-oar in a University boat-race. Add to this, that nobody had ever
seen him read any thing but a newspaper, and that nobody had ever
known him to be backward in settling a bet--and the picture of this
distinguished young Englishman will be, for the present, complete.
Blanche’s eye naturally rested on him. Blanche’s voice naturally picked
him out as the first player on her side.
“I choose Mr. Delamayn,” she said.
As the name passed her lips the flush on Miss Silvester’s face died
away, and a deadly paleness took its place. She made a movement to leave
the summer-house--checked herself abruptly--and laid one hand on the
back of a rustic seat at her side. A gentleman behind her, looking at
the hand, saw it clench itself so suddenly and so fiercely that
the glove on it split. The gentleman made a mental memorandum, and
registered Miss Silvester in his private books as “the devil’s own
temper.”
Meanwhile Mr. Delamayn, by a strange coincidence, took exactly the same
course which Miss Silvester had taken before him. He, too, attempted to
withdraw from the coming game.
“Thanks very much,” he said. “Could you additionally honor me by
choosing somebody else? It’s not in my line.”
Fifty years ago such an answer as this, addressed to a lady, would have
been considered inexcusably impertinent. The social code of the present
time hailed it as something frankly amusing. The company laughed.
Blanche lost her temper.
“Can’t we interest you in any thing but severe muscular exertion,
Mr. Delamayn?” she asked, sharply. “Must you always be pulling in a
boat-race, or flying over a high jump? If you had a mind, you would want
to relax it. You have got muscles instead. Why not relax _them_?”
The shafts of Miss Lundie’s bitter wit glided off Mr. Geoffrey Delamayn
like water off a duck’s back.
“Just as you please,” he said, with stolid good-humor. “Don’t be
offended. I came here with ladies--and they wouldn’t let me smoke. I
miss my smoke. I thought I’d slip away a bit and have it. All right!
I’ll play.”
“Oh! smoke by all means!” retorted Blanche. “I shall choose somebody
else. I won’t have you!”
The honorable young gentleman looked unaffectedly relieved. The petulant
young lady turned her back on him, and surveyed the guests at the other
extremity of the summer-house.
“Who shall I choose?” she said to herself.
A dark young man--with a face burned gipsy-brown by the sun; with
something in his look and manner suggestive of a roving life, and
perhaps of a familiar acquaintance with the sea--advanced shyly, and
said, in a whisper:
“Choose me!”
Blanche’s face broke prettily into a charming smile. Judging from
appearances, the dark young man had a place in her estimation peculiarly
his own.
“You!” she said, coquettishly. “You are going to leave us in an hour’s
time!”
He ventured a step nearer. “I am coming back,” he pleaded, “the day
after to-morrow.”
“You play very badly!”
“I might improve--if you would teach me.”
“Might you? Then I will teach you!” She turned, bright and rosy, to her
step-mother. “I choose Mr. Arnold Brinkworth,” she said.
Here, again, there appeared to be something in a name unknown to
celebrity, which nevertheless produced its effect--not, this time, on
Miss Silvester, but on Sir Patrick. He looked at Mr. Brinkworth with a
sudden interest and curiosity. If the lady of the house had not claimed
his attention at the moment he would evidently have spoken to the dark
young man.
But it was Lady Lundie’s turn to choose a second player on her side.
Her brother-in-law was a person of some importance; and she had her
own motives for ingratiating herself with the head of the family. She
surprised the whole company by choosing Sir Patrick.
“Mamma!” cried Blanche. “What can you be thinking of? Sir Patrick won’t
play. Croquet wasn’t discovered in his time.”
Sir Patrick never allowed “his time” to be made the subject of
disparaging remarks by the younger generation without paying the
younger generation back in its own coin.
“In _my_ time, my dear,” he said to his niece, “people were expected to
bring some agreeable quality with them to social meetings of this sort.
In your time you have dispensed with all that. Here,” remarked the old
gentleman, taking up a croquet mallet from the table near him, “is
one of the qualifications for success in modern society. And here,” he
added, taking up a ball, “is another. Very good. Live and learn. I’ll
play! I’ll play!”
Lady Lundie (born impervious to all sense of irony) smiled graciously.
“I knew Sir Patrick would play,” she said, “to please me.”
Sir Patrick bowed with satirical politeness.
“Lady Lundie,” he answered, “you read me like a book.” To the
astonishment of all persons present under forty he emphasized those
words by laying his hand on his heart, and quoting poetry. “I may say
with Dryden,” added the gallant old gentleman:
“‘Old as I am, for ladies’ love unfit,
The power of beauty I remember yet.’”
Lady Lundie looked unaffectedly shocked. Mr. Delamayn went a step
farther. He interfered on the spot--with the air of a man who feels
himself imperatively called upon to perform a public duty.
“Dryden never said that,” he remarked, “I’ll answer for it.”
Sir Patrick wheeled round with the help of his ivory cane, and looked
Mr. Delamayn hard in the face.
“Do you know Dryden, Sir, better than I do?” he asked.
The Honorable Geoffrey answered, modestly, “I should say I did. I have
rowed three races with him, and we trained together.”
Sir Patrick looked round him with a sour smile of triumph.
“Then let me tell you, Sir,” he said, “that you trained with a man who
died nearly two hundred years ago.”
Mr. Delamayn appealed, in genuine bewilderment, to the company
generally:
“What does this old gentleman mean?” he asked. “I am speaking of Tom
Dryden, of Corpus. Every body in the University knows _him._”
“I am speaking,” echoed Sir Patrick, “of John Dryden the Poet.
Apparently, every body in the University does _not_ know _him!”_
Mr. Delamayn answered, with a cordial earnestness very pleasant to see:
“Give you my word of honor, I never heard of him before in my life!
Don’t be angry, Sir. _I’m_ not offended with _you._” He smiled, and took
out his brier-wood pipe. “Got a light?” he asked, in the friendliest
possible manner.
Sir Patrick answered, with a total absence of cordiality:
“I don’t smoke, Sir.”
Mr. Delamayn looked at him, without taking the slightest offense:
“You don’t smoke!” he repeated. “I wonder how you get through your spare
time?”
Sir Patrick closed the conversation:
“Sir,” he said, with a low bow, “you _may_ wonder.”
While this little skirmish was proceeding Lady Lundie and her
step-daughter had organized the game; and the company, players and
spectators, were beginning to move toward the lawn. Sir Patrick stopped
his niece on her way out, with the dark young man in close attendance on
her.
“Leave Mr. Brinkworth with me,” he said. “I want to speak to him.”
Blanche issued her orders immediately. Mr. Brinkworth was sentenced to
stay with Sir Patrick until she wanted him for the game. Mr. Brinkworth
wondered, and obeyed.
During the exercise of this act of authority a circumstance occurred
at the other end of the summer-house. Taking advantage of the confusion
caused by the general movement to the lawn, Miss Silvester suddenly
placed herself close to Mr. Delamayn.
“In ten minutes,” she whispered, “the summer-house will be empty. Meet
me here.”
The Honorable Geoffrey started, and looked furtively at the visitors
about him.
“Do you think it’s safe?” he whispered back.
The governess’s sensitive lips trembled, with fear or with anger, it was
hard to say which.
“I insist on it!” she answered, and left him.
Mr. Delamayn knitted his handsome eyebrows as he looked after her, and
then left the summer-house in his turn. The rose-garden at the back of
the building was solitary for the moment. He took out his pipe and hid
himself among the roses. The smoke came from his mouth in hot and hasty
puffs. He was usually the gentlest of masters--to his pipe. When he
hurried that confidential servant, it was a sure sign of disturbance in
the inner man.
CHAPTER THE THIRD.
THE DISCOVERIES.
BUT two persons were now left in the summer-house--Arnold Brinkworth and
Sir Patrick Lundie.
“Mr. Brinkworth,” said the old gentleman, “I have had no opportunity of
speaking to you before this; and (as I hear that you are to leave us,
to-day) I may find no opportunity at a later time. I want to introduce
myself. Your father was one of my dearest friends--let me make a friend
of your father’s son.”
He held out his hands, and mentioned his name.
Arnold recognized it directly. “Oh, Sir Patrick!” he said, warmly, “if
my poor father had only taken your advice--”
“He would have thought twice before he gambled away his fortune on the
turf; and he might have been alive here among us, instead of dying an
exile in a foreign land,” said Sir Patrick, finishing the sentence which
the other had begun. “No more of that! Let’s talk of something else.
Lady Lundie wrote to me about you the other day. She told me your aunt
was dead, and had left you heir to her property in Scotland. Is that
true?--It is?--I congratulate you with all my heart. Why are you
visiting here, instead of looking after your house and lands? Oh! it’s
only three-and-twenty miles from this; and you’re going to look after
it to-day, by the next train? Quite right. And--what? what?--coming back
again the day after to-morrow? Why should you come back? Some special
attraction here, I suppose? I hope it’s the right sort of attraction.
You’re very young--you’re exposed to all sorts of temptations. Have you
got a solid foundation of good sense at the bottom of you? It is not
inherited from your poor father, if you have. You must have been a mere
boy when he ruined his children’s prospects. How have you lived from
that time to this? What were you doing when your aunt’s will made an
idle man of you for life?”
The question was a searching one. Arnold answered it, without the
slightest hesitation; speaking with an unaffected modesty and simplicity
which at once won Sir Patrick’s heart.
“I was a boy at Eton, Sir,” he said, “when my father’s losses ruined
him. I had to leave school, and get my own living; and I have got it,
in a roughish way, from that time to this. In plain English, I have
followed the sea--in the merchant-service.”
“In plainer English still, you met adversity like a brave lad, and you
have fairly earned the good luck that has fallen to you,” rejoined Sir
Patrick. “Give me your hand--I have taken a liking to you. You’re not
like the other young fellows of the present time. I shall call you
‘Arnold.’ You mus’n’t return the compliment and call me ‘Patrick,’
mind--I’m too old to be treated in that way. Well, and how do you get on
here? What sort of a woman is my sister-in-law? and what sort of a house
is this?”
Arnold burst out laughing.
“Those are extraordinary questions for you to put to me,” he said. “You
talk, Sir, as if you were a stranger here!”
Sir Patrick touched a spring in the knob of his ivory cane. A little
gold lid flew up, and disclosed the snuff-box hidden inside. He took a
pinch, and chuckled satirically over some passing thought, which he did
not think it necessary to communicate to his young friend.