"AND BEAUTY DRAWS US WITH A SINGLE HAIR."
Christmas was near at hand, the fox-hunting season was in full swing,
and Lady Judith and Mr. Topsparkle had made up a large party for sport
and music at Ringwood Abbey. Her Grace of Marlborough and Mr. Congreve
were to be there; Sir Robert Walpole had promised to spend half a week
away from the charms of his own beloved Houghton and his still dearer
Molly Skerritt. The two spendthrift Spencers were asked, and
Chesterfield; while Bolingbroke, whom Lady Judith pretended to admire
more than any man living, was to be the chief star among so many
luminaries.
Lady Judith affected to have taken a fancy to the new heiress, and was
so pressing in her invitation to Lady Tredgold to bring her sweet niece
to Ringwood for the Christmas holidays, that the good lady could not
resist the temptation to visit at a house which she had so often joined
in rancorously abusing for its riotous extravagance and corrupt taste.
But as Lady Judith had pointedly ignored the two gaunt daughters in her
invitation, Lady Tredgold considered herself under no obligation to be
grateful. She left the daughters in Arlington Street under the charge of
Mdlle. Latour, and started for Ringwood with Rena and two maids in a
coach and six. Had she been travelling at her own expense, she might
have managed the journey with four horses, bad as the roads were; but as
Mr. Bosworth had to pay, she considered six indispensable. Had the
journey been at her own cost, she might even have gone in the great
heavy Salisbury coach, which, although periodically surprised by
highwaymen between Putney and Kingston, or on Bagshot Heath, was perhaps
somewhat safer in its strength of numbers than any private conveyance.
On this occasion she took a couple of footmen armed with blunderbusses,
hid her own and the heiress's jewels in a little leather bag under the
seat, and put her trust in Providence for the rest. Despite of these
precautions and of her six horses she might, perchance, have fared
badly, had it not been for an unexpected reinforcement in the persons of
Lavendale and Durnford, who overtook the carriage on Putney Common in
the sharp frosty morning of December 21.
They were both well mounted on powerful roadsters, and followed by two
grooms upon horses of scarcely inferior quality; gentlemen and servants
were both armed.
Irene blushed and sparkled at sight of the two cavaliers, and Lavendale,
spoiled by a decade of successes, made sure those smiles were for him.
"You are early on the road, ladies," he exclaimed gaily, "considering
that it was past two this morning ere you plunged the Ridotto in
untimely gloom by your departure. There were some blockheads who put
down that diminished lustre to a sudden failure of the wax candles; but
I knew 'twas but two pairs of eyes that had ceased to shine upon the
assembly. Pray how far do you propose travelling to-day, Lady Tredgold?"
"Only as far as Fairmile. We are to lie at my brother's house to-night,
and pursue our journey at eight o'clock to-morrow morning. It is odious
rising so early in winter. My niece and I dressed by candlelight, and
the watchman was crying half-past six o'clock and a frosty morning when
my maid came to wake me. It seemed but half an hour since I left the
Ridotto."
"'Tis those short nights that shorten the measure of life, madam," said
Durnford gravely. "Mrs. Bosworth will be older by ten years for the
pleasures of a single season."
Her ladyship honoured the speaker with a slow, supercilious stare, and
deigned no other answer.
"0, but there are some things worth wasting life for, Mr. Durnford,"
replied Irene, smiling at him; "the opera, for instance. I would barter
a year of my old age for one night of _Rinaldo_ or _Theseus_."
"A lady of eighteen is as free with the treasure of long life as a minor
with his reversion," said Durnford. "Both are spendthrifts. But I, who
have passed life's zenith, which with a man I take to be thirty, am
beginning to be chary of my declining years. I hope to win some prize
out of life's lottery, and to live happy ever after, as they say in
fairy tales. Now I conclude that 'ever after' in your story-book means a
hale old age."
"Give me the present hour and its pleasures," cried Lavendale, "a bumper
of rattle and excitement, filled to the brim, a long deep draught of
joy, and no for-ever-after of old age and decline, in which to regret
the golden days of youth. There should be no _arrière pensée_ on such a
morning as this, with a bright winter sun, a good trotting-horse, and
beauty's eyes for our lode-stars."
"How does your lordship happen to be travelling our way?" asked Lady
Tredgold.
"For the simplest of all reasons: I and my friend Durnford here are both
bound for the same destination."
"You are going to Ringwood Abbey! How very curious, how very pleasant!"
exclaimed the lady, in her most gracious tones; then she added with a
colder air, and without looking at the person of whom she spoke, "I was
not aware that Mr. Durnford was acquainted with Mr. Topsparkle."
Durnford was absorbed in the landscape, and made no reply to the
indirect question.
"Mr. Topsparkle is ever on the alert to invite clever people to his
house," said Lavendale, "and Lady Judith has a rage for literature,
poetry, science, what you will. She is a student of Newton and
Flamsteed, and loves lectures on physical science such as Desaguliers
gave the town when Durnford and I were boys. Lady Judith is devoted to
Mr. Durnford."
"I am charmed to learn that literature is so highly appreciated," said
her ladyship stiffly.
She made up her mind that Herrick Durnford was dangerous--a
fortune-hunter, doubtless, with a keen scent for an heiress; and she had
observed that her niece blushed when he addressed her.
She could not, however, be openly uncivil to so close a friend of Lord
Lavendale's, so the journey progressed pleasantly enough; the horsemen
trotting beside the carriage like a bodyguard for a while, and then
dropping behind to breathe their cattle, or cantering in advance now and
then when there came a long stretch of level turf by the wayside.
They all stopped at Kingston for an early dinner, and it was growing
towards dusk when the coach and six fresh horses started on the second
stage of the journey. The progress became slower from this point. The
road was dark, and had the reputation of being a favourite resort for
highwaymen. Lady Tredgold had never yet been face to face with one of
those monsters, but she had an ever-present terror of masked and armed
marauders springing out upon her from every hedge. It was but last year
that Jonathan Wild had paid the penalty of his crimes, and Jack Sheppard
had swung the year before; and though neither of these had won his
renown upon the road, Lady Tredgold vaguely associated those great names
with danger to travellers. It was not so very long since the Duke of
Chandos had been stopped by five highwaymen on a night journey from
Canons to London; nor had her ladyship forgotten how the Chichester mail
had been robbed of the letter-bags in Battersea Bottom; nor that robbery
on the road at Acton, by which the wretches made off with a booty of two
thousand pounds. And she had the family diamonds under the seat of the
carriage, tied up in a rag of old chintz to make the parcel seem
insignificant; and her point lace alone was worth a small fortune.
She counted her forces, and concluded that so long as they all kept
together no band of robbers would be big enough or bold enough to attack
them.
"Don't leave us, I entreat, dear Lord Lavendale," she urged, as they
crossed Esher Common. "We will drive as slow as ever you like, so as not
to tire your saddle-horses. Tell those postboys to go slower."
"Have no fear, madam," answered Lavendale gaily. "Our hacks are not
easily tired. We will stick by you as close as if we were gentlemen of
the road and had hopes of booty."
So they rode cheerily enough towards Fairmile. It was broad moonlight by
the time they came to Flamestead Common; a clear, cold, winter moon,
which lighted up every hillock and gleamed silvery upon the tiny
waterpools.
Durnford had been riding close beside the coach, talking of music and
plays with Irene; but as they approached this open ground where the
light was clearest, he observed a change in her countenance. Those
lovely eyes became clouded over, those lovely lips ceased to smile, and
his remarks were responded to briefly, with an absent air.
"Why are you silent, dearest miss?" he asked. Lady Tredgold was snoring
in her corner of the carriage, Lavendale was riding on the farther side
of the road, and those two seemed almost alone. "Does yonder cold, pale
planet inspire you with a gentle melancholy?"
"I was thinking of the past," she answered gravely, looking beyond him
towards that irregular ground where flowerless furze-bushes showed black
against the steel-blue sky.
"You can have no past to inspire sad thoughts. You are too young."
"One is never too young for sorrow. The memory of a companion I loved
very dearly is associated with this spot."
And then she told him the story of her little adopted sister, as she had
heard it often from her nurse Bridget--the little fair-haired child who
seemed like her own reflection charmed into life--the happy days and
evenings they two had spent together, and how death came untimely and
snapped that golden thread.
"I like to look upon the place where my father found her, and the place
where she lies in her little grave," said Rena, straining her eyes,
first towards the Common which they were now leaving, and then further
afield to the low Norman tower of Flamestead Church.
Lady Tredgold woke suddenly when her niece relapsed into silence, and
inquired where they were.
"Within half an hour of home, madam," answered Rena.
"Home!" and her ladyship, still half asleep, thought of that stately
stone mansion in the fair white city of Bath, where her husband was left
in solitude to nurse his gout and lament his wife's absence. Not but
that Bath was a very pleasant place for a solitary man in those days,
being the resort of fashion, wit, and beauty, statesmen and soldiers,
men of letters and fine gentlemen, an ever-shifting gallery of faces, a
various assembly of well-bred people, who all found it necessary from
time to time to repair to "the Bath." Golden age for England when
Continental spas were known only to the few, and when fashionable people
were not ashamed to enjoy themselves on English soil. Had not the
distinguished, erratic Lord Peterborough himself been seen hurrying
through those busy streets from the market to his lodgings, with a
cabbage under one arm and a chicken under the other, blue ribbon and
star on his breast all the same? A city of considerable latitude both as
to manners and morals.
"O, you mean Fairmile," muttered her ladyship, with a disappointed air;
for though she loved a season in London at somebody else's cost, she had
a passion for Bath, which to her was veritably home, and in her
slumberous state she had fancied herself just entering that delightful
city. "I hope the beds will be aired. There was plenty of time for that
queer, grim housekeeper to get my letter."
"You need have no fear, aunt. Mrs. Layburne is not an agreeable woman,
but she is a very good manager. The servants all fear and obey her."
"That is just the sort of person one wants to look after a household.
Your good, easy-tempered souls are no use, and they are generally arrant
cheats into the bargain. Do you lie at the Manor to-night, Lord
Lavendale?"
Lavendale had been riding as in a dream, with head bent, and rein loose
in a careless hand. A horse less sure-footed than his famous black Styx
might have stumbled and thrown him. He was thinking of Lady Judith
Topsparkle; wondering why she had so urgently invited him to Ringwood
Abbey, when, if she had his sense of peril, she would assuredly have
avoided his company. It might be that for her the past was utterly past;
so completely forgotten that she could afford to indulge herself in the
latest whim of the moment. What but a whim could be her friendship for
him, her eagerness to mate him with wealth and beauty? How completely
indifferent must she have become to those old memories which had still
such potency with him!
"Why, if she can forget, so can I," he told himself. "Should Horace be
truer than Lydia to an expired love? and yet, and yet, were Thracian
Chloe ten times as fair, one of those old familiar glances from Lydia's
starry eyes would send my blood to fever-point."
The gentlemen escorted the coach to the very door of Mr. Bosworth's
house, much to Lady Tredgold's contentment, as she suspected marauders
even among the old elm-trunks in Fairmile avenue. Arrived at the house,
her ladyship honoured Lord Lavendale with a cordial invitation to
supper; but as she ignored his companion Lavendale declined her
hospitality, on the ground that the horses had done so heavy a day's
work that they must needs require the comfort of their own stables. And
so the two gentlemen said good-night, and rode away to Lavendale Manor,
after promising to be in attendance upon the ladies at eight next
morning.
Nurse Bridget was in the hall, eager to welcome her dear charge, from
whom she had never been parted until this winter. Nurse and nursling
hugged each other affectionately, and then Bridget put back Irene's
black silk hood, and contemplated the fair young face in warmest
admiration.
"You have grown prettier than ever," she exclaimed, "and taller too; I
protest you are taller. I hope your ladyship will pardon me for loving
my pet too much to be mannerly," she added, curtsying to Lady Tredgold.
"There is nothing, my good creature, unmannerly in affection. Yes, Miss
Bosworth has certainly grown; and then she has had her stays made by my
French staymaker, and that improves any young woman's figure and gives a
taller air. I hope they have got us a decent supper. I am positively
famished. And I hope there are good fires, for my niece and I have been
starved this last two hours. The night is horribly cold. And have you
aired a room for my maids?"
"Yes, my lady," and "Yes, my lady," said Bridget, with low curtsies, in
reply to all these eager questions; and then Lady Tredgold and her niece
followed the fat old butler--he had contrived to keep fat by sheer
inactivity, in spite of Mrs. Layburne's meagre housekeeping--to the long
white drawing-room, where there was a blazing log fire, and where Irene
flew to her harpsichord and began to play the Sparrow Symphony from
_Rinaldo_. There are moments of happiness, joyous impulses in the lives
of women, which can only find expression in music.