"YET WOULD I WISH TO LOVE, LIVE, DIE WITH THEE."
Three miles and a quarter from Fairmile Court, as the crow flies, stands
Lavendale Manor, one of the oldest seats in Surrey. It had been a
Cistercian grange in the reign of Stephen, and had been an appendage of
one of the most flourishing monastic institutions in England when the
Reformation cut short the monks and all their works, good or evil, and
confiscated the grange, with its fifteen hundred acres of woods and
farmlands, in favour of one of the king's strongest supporters. From
that nobleman's hands it had passed to another and still nobler house,
and then by marriage to Sir John Porlock, a west-country baronet of good
family, one of the most brilliant among the younger lights of Charles
II.'s Court, a friend of Dorset and Rochester, whose son became a power
among the Whig party in the House of Commons at the beginning of
William's reign, and was raised to the Peerage with the title of Baron
Lavendale. The first Lord Lavendale died a year after his royal master,
leaving an only son of eight years old to be brought up by a widowed
mother. Unhappily, that best and purest of women died before her son
attained manhood, and an impulsive light-hearted lad of fifteen was
abandoned to the care of tutors, servants, and parasites in general;
whereby a character which might easily have been shaped and guided for
good was given over as a prey to the powers of evil.
Lavendale Manor, with its noble Italian gardens laid out by the famous
French gardener, Le Nôtre, in the reign of Charles II., and its
extensive park, had been but little less neglected for the last ten
years than the neighbouring domain of Fairmile. During Lavendale's
minority, stewards and servants had been unanimous in doing as little
work as possible, and getting the most that could be got out of the
estate; and from the time of his majority the owner of that estate had
been doing his utmost to impoverish and even to ruin it. The fountains
and statues which Sir John Porlock had brought from Rome, the old
dining-hall and carved stone porch which dated from the time of the
martyred Becket, clipped yew-tree walls, pyramids, and obelisks of
greenery, old things and new, had alike suffered neglect; mosses and
lichens had crept over fountain and Greek gods, and ivy had forced its
intrusive tendrils amidst the carven arches and clustered columns of the
old Gothic porch.
The house itself had been decently kept, and Lavendale came back to his
old home to find a certain appearance of preparedness and comfort in the
fine old rooms, with their curious admixture of furniture, English,
French, and Dutch, the latter preponderating with its somewhat clumsy
bulk and variegated inlaying; great tulip-wood cabinets, which reminded
Lavendale of the coat of many colours in that story of Joseph and his
brethren which he remembered poring over again and again in that dim
long ago when he was a little lad at his mother's knees, and had pious
readings for Sundays. Too soon had come the time when Sunday reading
and Sunday as a day apart from other days had ceased to be for Lord
Lavendale, and when he was in the first rank of fashionable
infidels--the men who borrowed their opinions from Henry St. John, and
welcomed the new light called Voltaire, a star just then showing pale
and clear above the horizon.
It was late in the evening when Lavendale and Durnford arrived at the
Manor House. They had ridden from Bloomsbury--a thirty-mile ride--and
had baited their horses at Kingston. The servants were retiring for the
night when the great bell rang under the stone porch, and all the
household was on the alert in a minute or two, deferentially receiving a
master whom they could have wished had found his way to the other side
of the Stygian stream rather than to disturb the placidity of their
after-supper repose. Footmen were sent flying to lay a table, and sleepy
cook and kitchen-wench explored the larder. While supper was being
prepared, Lord Lavendale went to the farther end of the house, to a
spacious vaulted apartment that had been a refectory in the days of the
Cistercians, but was now a library. Beyond it there was a still larger
room which had been a chapel, and, never converted to any secular
purpose, had been left to bats, spiders, and emptiness.
Lavendale had seen lights in the windows of this room as he rode up to
the house, and he guessed that Signor Vincenti, chemist, student, and
discoverer, was at work there.
"Well, old mole!" he said gaily, as he opened the heavy oaken door, and
stood looking at the Italian, who sat huddled up in a huge armchair
beside a table loaded and scattered with volumes of all shapes and
sizes, under the strong light of a curiously-shaped metal lamp, which
made a central spot of vivid brightness in the great shadowy room. "You
see we have not left you long to your solitary studies and your beloved
seclusion. Durnford and I have come to badger you."
"'Twould be hard if you could not come to your own house, my lord,"
answered the old man quietly, looking up with luminous dark eyes which
seemed all the more brilliant because of the snowy whiteness of the
thick eyebrows and the long, drooping locks which fell over the
forehead. "I will own that solitude and silence have been very precious
to me in this noble old mansion. Yes, silence is a priceless boon to the
searcher. In the silence of the living we can feel the companionship of
the dead."
Those last words had a subduing effect upon Lavendale. He laid aside hat
and whip, came slowly across the room, and seated himself opposite the
Italian.
"You have felt the influence of those who have gone before," he said;
"of the dead who once lived and loved, and were glad and sorry, in this
house."
"Yes, there never was yet an old house that was not eloquent with spirit
voices. There is one gentle shade that has been near me often in these
old rooms of yours--a tender, mournful soul, over-charged with sorrow."
"It is so easy for you to say these things," said Lavendale doubtingly.
"You have heard me talk of my mother so often."
"You questioned and I answered," replied the old man. "If it please you
to think me a charlatan, you are welcome to your opinion. I have neither
gain nor honour to win from you or any man living. K I have my ends and
aims, which neither you nor mortal man can aid. If I fail or if I
succeed, I do it alone. Human clay cannot help me."
"Why should this house in which I was born have voices which you can
hear, and yet for me hold only silence--for me who love every stone in
the fabric, for me who have wept the most passionate tears in my life
for her I lost here?"
"Because between the disembodied soul and you there is the barrier of
the flesh; because you have given yourself up to sensuous things and
sensuous pleasures; have eaten and drunk and delighted in the lowest
pleasures of your kind. How should such as you hope to hold communion
with the clear light of the soul released from clay? You must bring
yourself nearer the condition of the dead before you can feel their
influence."
"Sublimise myself by the extinguishment of every earthly passion? Nay,
my ethereal friend, at two-and-thirty that is not so easy. There is
something here," lightly touching his breast, "which pleads too ardently
for poor humanity--the heart, Vincenti, the passionate heart of
manhood. Do not believe those who tell you that the bad Lord Lavendale
has been altogether the slave of his senses. I never loved but once with
true fervour. All the rest has been vanity and confusion, the follies of
a fop who wanted to lead the fashion, and ever to be first in
depravity."
"You have been staunch in friendship," said Vincenti: "I can answer for
that. It was a happy hour for me when you found me laid up with fever at
an inn at Prague. In a situation which would have made any other
Englishman shun me, you succoured and rescued me."
"One eccentricity the more in an eccentric career, my friend. I found a
treasure by the wayside; and if you can but hold out long enough to make
the great discovery on the threshold of which so many an adept has given
up the ghost--"
"Let us not speak of that," interrupted the old man nervously; "there
are some things too sublime to be debated as your English Parliament
debates a vote of credit or a declaration of war. Those who have gone
down to the grave have carried too many of their secrets with them. The
approach to the great secret is clouded with darkness, beset with
difficulty. Yet who that has searched the secrets of Nature can doubt
that there is somewhere in her mysterious realm the vital fire which can
prolong the life of man, as surely as there are mineral and vegetable
powers which can regulate the blood in the veins, and permeate man's
whole frame with healing influences? Is there anything more miraculous
in the idea of life prolonged indefinitely than in the spectacle of a
fever-patient cured at the point of death? or of a brain distraught
restored to sense and calmness by the physician's art?"
* * * * *
Lord Lavendale devoted the next morning to an interview with his
steward, and while master and man were closeted in his lordship's study,
Herrick Durnford set out for a long morning's ramble in the park,
pleased to be free and alone--a privilege which he rarely enjoyed, as
Lavendale hated solitude.
It was a lovely morning, with all the freshness of spring and all the
brightness of summer. There had been cold winds all through April, and
the woods had worn their wintry russet longer than usual; but now all
at once, like the unfolding of a scene in fairyland, the trees had burst
into leaf, and endless varieties of vernal colour shone radiant against
the cloudless blue of a May morning. Herrick, who worshipped Nature's
loveliness, and who had been pent in cities of late, felt almost drunken
with rapture as he roamed in those dewy glades, where every turn of the
path revealed some new picture. He had some touch of poetry in his soul,
which still lingered there after a youth of folly; and as the years went
on there had come graver hours, in which the vanity and evil of his life
had been as plain to his eyes as it had ever been in the sight of his
worst enemy. He had been baptised Herrick at the desire of his mother,
who was a descendant of the poet's family; and now on this fair May
morning, amidst the changeful lights and shadows, his sympathy with
Nature was keen as that of him who sang the glory of the daffodil and
the brief beauty of the rose.
He had been wandering for a couple of hours flinging himself on the turf
now and again, lying at full length upon his back, and looking up into
the unfathomable blue, listening to the skylark soaring above his head,
or to the monotonous tap of the woodpecker nearer his ear, or to the too
persistent cuckoo, or to the multitudinous hum of that lower life which
revelled amidst the grasses and wild flowers where he lay. Life on such
a morning is as exhilarating as strong wine; Nature's loveliness mounts
to a man's brain, and makes him oblivious of all the cares and sorrows
of existence.
Herrick Durnford's life was by no means free from care at this period.
There was the sordid care of not being sure of a livelihood in the years
to come, the knowledge that he had passed the meridian line of youth
without having achieved even the commencement of a career. And yet he
had begun so well, had made his mark at Trinity College, Cambridge,
among some of the cleverest young men of his day, had been on the point
of taking honours, when he fell in with Lavendale and his set, and,
fascinated by the touch-and-go wit and reckless spirits of that
profligate circle, had given himself up to pleasure, and just missed
distinction.
The eldest son of a country parson with a numerous family, utterly
without patrimony, Herrick had contrived to maintain his independence so
far by the use of his pen. He had turned his hand to most of the
varieties of literature: had written verses, plays, political pamphlets,
and even a cookery-book, and his brilliant style and fashionable
connections had insured him the countenance of the publishers and the
favour of the public. Whether he wrote at Istamboul, Vienna, or Rome,
Herrick had always the same tone of good society, and the same air of
knowing every detail of the latest scandal. That he had dressed up old
stories from the scandalous memoirs of the French Court, and adapted
them to Mr. Pulteney and Miss Anna Maria Gumley, or the Prince of Wales
and Mrs. Bellenden, or General Churchill and Mrs. Oldfield, was to the
credit of his intelligence. "When the public want a new scandal I
contrive to find it for them," he said; "and if invention fail, I can at
the worst resuscitate an old one."
His plays had been performed with various degrees of success; but one,
_Faint Hearts_ and _Fair Ladies_, a kind of salad or _olla podrida_
made up of scraps from Davenant, Molière, Wycherley, and Lope de Vega,
had run five-and-thirty nights, had been denounced from the pulpit by
Bishop Gibson, virulently abused by Jeremy Collier, and had made Mr.
Durnford's reputation as a dramatist. When reproached for the reckless
licentiousness of his dialogue and the immorality of his plot, Herrick
shrugged his shoulders, and replied that his play was not written to be
read at family prayers, nor intended for a Christmas present for
school-misses of seventeen.
And now, having in some measure emptied his bag, feeling very little of
the writer's impulse left in him, Herrick contemplated a future which
had somewhat a dreary aspect. What was he to do for an honest living?
The learned professions were closed against him. It was too late to
think of law or medicine. Many a man in his position would have drifted
naturally to the Church, or would have taken advantage of Lavendale's
power to bestow preferment on his bosom friend. But Durnford was not
base enough to carry his unbelief to the pulpit or the altar. The Church
was closed against him for ever by that melancholy materialism which
had crept over him since he left college--a mind always questioning
Nature and never finding any satisfactory answer.
There had been hours of despondency when he had thought of leaving
England for ever, and casting in his lot with Bishop Berkeley at his new
university of Bermuda; but although the bill had been passed for the
endowment of the university, Walpole had not yet advanced the 20,000_l._
promised, and the Bermuda scheme was still in the clouds.
No, there was nothing for him but his pen--unless he could turn
mountebank and air his handsome person on the stage. Actors were all the
fashion just now, the pets and playthings of society. Or unless he could
get into Parliament and sell himself to the chief of his party. Sir
Robert, the great trafficker, was still in power, but his throne was
tottering, and it was said that when his fall should come it would be
more terrible than that of Wolsey. Ruin, impeachment, death even, loomed
in that dark future for him under whose rule England had been great
among the nations. There were some who said, "If Walpole escape,
Strafford was indeed a martyr."
"No, it is my pen that must support me," Herrick told himself, rambling
at ease by Chase and common-land, feeling as if that fresh morning air
were inspiration, and that genius and power were reviving in him. "After
all, 'tis the one easy vagabond mode of life that suits my character and
temperament. The lowest garreteer, the meanest hack that ever scribbled
for Curl or Lintot, is more his own master than the Queen's counsel who
has to fawn upon solicitors, or the parson who must preach lies once a
week and prate platitudes at the deathbeds of all his parishioners. Yes,
by my pen will I live; if it is a hand-to-mouth existence, it is at
least free. Fancies and original notions will come to me in my garret,
as the ravens came to the prophet in his cave. There is a mysterious
power which feeds the invention of poor devils who have to live by their
wits. An author's mind may be blank to-day, yet to-morrow teem with
schemes and suggestions. And who shall say that I may not some day be
famous? Joseph Addison was no better off than I am now when good luck
visited him in his garret up three pairs of stairs, in the person of
Godolphin's messenger with a commission for an epic on Blenheim."
He had been wandering in the wildest part of the Chase, scaring the
young pheasants from their feeding-ground, when he came suddenly upon
the rough post and rail fence which divided the Lavendale domain from
Fairmile Park; and he stopped, started, and clasped his hands at sight
of a face and figure which seemed more like the embodiment of a musing
poet's ecstasy than a being of commonplace flesh and blood.
A girlish face looked at him from a background of oak-branches, a
girlish form was leaning upon the moss-grown rail, while a couple of
dogs--a Newfoundland and an Irish setter--stood up with their fore-paws
on the rail, and barked their loudest at the stranger.
"Down, Sappho!" to the setter; "down, Cato, down!" said the girl, laying
her white hand first on one curly head and then on the other. "They
won't hurt you, sir," apologetically to the stranger, for whose blood
both dogs seemed panting. "I am sorry they should be so disagreeable.
Sappho, how can you? Don't you see the gentleman is not a tramp?"
Durnford looked at her, speechless with admiration. There was a
freshness of youthful beauty here which came upon him like a revelation:
the oval face, with its ivory tint and pale blush-rose bloom, the large
violet eyes, with dark lashes, and the wavy golden hair. Never had he
seen such colouring out of Italy or an Italian picture. The face was so
much more Italian than English, and yet there was a sweet simplicity
which was entirely native to this British soil, a candid girlish
innocence, as of a girl not too closely guarded nor too much counselled
by age and experience.
Those large velvety eyes looked up at him in perfect confidence.
"I thank you, madam, I am not afraid of your dogs. Down, Sappho! See,
this brown, curly-eared lady is friends with me at once, and Cato looks
civiller than he did just now. I have a passion for fine dogs like
these, and an Irish setter is my prime favourite of all the canine
race."
"My father had this one brought over from Ireland," said the girl; "she
is very clever after game, but he says I am spoiling her."
"I can imagine that your kindness may have an enervating effect," said
Durnford, smiling.
"But she's so clever in other ways. She begs for toast so prettily every
morning at breakfast, and my governess has taught her ever so many
tricks. Sappho, what will you do for your king?"
This was asked severely. Sappho looked bored, hesitated, snapped at a
passing fly, and then flung herself on the ground, and sprawled there,
with her tail wagging vehemently.
"Sappho!" remonstrated the girl, and the tail was quiet.
"_Dulce et decorum est_--" said Durnford, while Irene took a lump of
sugar out of her apron-pocket and rewarded her favourite.
"That's more than some patriots get for their devotion," he said,
laughing; and then he went on tentatively, "I think I must have the
honour of conversing with Mr. Bosworth's daughter."
She answered in the affirmative; and then, in the easiest way, they
drifted into conversation, walking side by side in shade and shine, with
the stout oak rail between them. Durnford talked of his recent travels;
Irene told him about her governess, and the last of her music and books.
It all came about as naturally as if they had both been children. They
spent half an hour thus, and then parted, promising to be at the same
spot at the same hour next day, when Durnford was to bring his
sketch-book and show her the pencil records of his wanderings. Irene had
not the slightest idea that there was anything wrong in such an
arrangement. She was utterly without shyness, as she was utterly without
knowledge of evil.
Durnford went back to the Abbey, feeling as Endymion might have felt
after conversing with Diana. "She is as beautiful as the Goddess of
Chastity, and even more innocent," he said to himself. "Lives there the
traitor base enough to wrong such purity? And she is heiress to old
Bosworth's fortune, which rumour has exaggerated into a million. He made
money in the South Sea scheme, and he has been lucky on 'Change ever
since, 'tis said--yet these stock-jobbers often end by wrecking the
palace they have reared. If she is an heiress she is not for me, save by
the baseness of an elopement and a Mayfair marriage; and that were to
take the vilest advantage of girlish innocence and heavenly confidence.
But how fast I am running on! Because I have fallen over head and ears
in love with her in the first half-hour of our acquaintance, am I such a
fool as to suppose she is just as ready to fall in love with me--with a
battered rake of thirty? Why, to her, doubtless, I seem a middle-aged
man--a grave and philosophical personage with whom she may safely
converse, as with the village doctor or the village parson. If I had
appeared before her like a fine gentleman, in all the glory of
Spitalfields velvet and embroidery, powder and patches, she would have
fled from me, like Daphne from Phoebus; but my careless gray suit and
unpowdered hair, and my careworn looks, suggested only mature years and
discretion. Will she come to-morrow, I wonder? and how shall I live for
twenty-four weary hours without her?"