“Who will dare
To pluck thee from me? And of thine own will,
Full well I feel that thou wouldst not leave me.”
The sunshine of a summer morning, streaming in through mullioned
windows that looked due south, raised Juanita’s spirits, and
dispersed her fears. It was impossible to feel depressed under such
a sky. She had been wakeful for a considerable part of the night,
brooding upon that ghostly footstep which had sent such a sudden
chill to her warm young heart, but that broad clear light of morning
brought common sense.
“I dare say it was only some lovesick housemaid, roaming about after
all the others had gone to bed, in order to have a quiet think about
her sweetheart, and what he said to her last Sunday as they went home
from church. I know how _I_ used to walk about with no company but
my thoughts of you, Godfrey, and how sweet it used to be to go over
all your dearest words—over and over again,—and no doubt the heart
of a housemaid is worked by just the same machinery that sets mine
going—and her thoughts would follow the same track.”
“That is what we are taught to believe, dearest, in this enlightened
age.”
“Why should it be a ghost?” pursued Juanita, leaning back in her
bamboo chair, and lazily enjoying the summer morning, somewhat
languid after a sleepless night.
They were breakfasting at the western end of the terrace, with an
awning over their heads, and a couple of footmen travelling to and
from the house in attendance upon them, and keeping respectfully out
of earshot between whiles. The table was heaped with roses, and the
waxen chalices of a great magnolia on the lower level showed above
the marble balustrade, and shed an almost overpowering perfume on the
warm air.
“Why should a ghost come now?” she asked, harping upon her morbid
fancies. “There has never been a hint of a ghost in all the years
that father and mother have lived here. Why should one come now,
unless——”
“Unless what, love?”
“Unless one of the Strangways died last night—at the very moment when
we heard the footfall—died in some distant land, perhaps, and with
his last dying thought revisited the place of his birth. One has
heard of such things.”
“One has heard of a great many strange things. The human imagination
is very inventive.”
“Ah, you are a sceptic, I know. I don’t think I actually believe
in ghosts—but I am afraid of being forced to believe in them. Oh,
Godfrey, if it were meant for a warning,” she cried, with sudden
terror in the large dark eyes.
“What kind of warning?”
“A presage of misfortune—sickness—death. I have read so many stories
of such warnings.”
“My dearest love, you have read too much rubbish in that line. Your
mind is full of morbid fancies. If the morning were not too warm,
I should say put on your habit and let us go for a long ride. I am
afraid this sauntering life of ours is too depressing for you.”
“Depressing—to be with you all day! Oh, Godfrey, _you_ must be tired
of _me_ if you can suggest such a thing.”
“But, my Nita, when I see you giving yourself up to gloomy
speculations about ghosts and omens.”
“Oh, that means nothing. When one has a very precious treasure one
must needs be full of fears. Look at misers; how nervous they are
about their hidden gold. And my treasure is more to me than all the
gold of Ophir—infinitely precious.”
She sprang up from her low chair, and leaned over the back of his to
kiss the broad brow which was lifted up to meet those clinging lips.
“Oh, my love, my love, I never knew what fear meant till I knew the
fear of parting from you,” she murmured.
“Put on your habit, Nita. We will go for a ride in spite of the
sun. Or what do you say to driving to Dorchester, and storming your
cousins for a lunch? I want to talk to Mr. Dalbrook about Skinner’s
bill of dilapidations.”
Her mood changed in an instant.
“That would be capital fun,” she cried. “I wonder if it is a breach
of etiquette to lunch with one’s cousins during one’s honeymoon?”
“A fig for etiquette. Thomas,” to an approaching footman, “order the
phaeton for half-past eleven.”
“What a happy idea,” said Juanita, “a long, long drive with you, and
then the fun of seeing how you get on with my strong-minded cousins.
They pretend to despise everything that other girls care for, don’t
you know; and go in for literature, science, politics, every thing
intellectual, in short; and I have seen them sit and nurse Darwin
or Buckle for a whole evening, while they have talked of gowns and
bonnets and other girls’ flirtations.”
“Then they are not such Roman maidens as they affect to be.”
“Far from it. They will take the pattern of my frock with their eyes
before I have been in the room ten minutes. Just watch them.”
“I will; if I can take my eyes off you.”
Juanita ran away to change her white peignoir for a walking-dress,
and reappeared in half an hour radiant and ready for the drive.
“How do you like my frock?” she asked, posing herself in front of her
husband, and challenging admiration.
The frock was old gold Indian silk, soft and dull, made with an
exquisite simplicity of long flowing draperies, over a kilted
petticoat which just showed the neat little tan shoes, and a glimpse
of tan silk stocking. The bodice fitted the tall supple figure like a
glove; the sleeves were loose and short, tied carelessly at the elbow
with a broad satin ribbon, and the long suéde gloves matched the
gown to the nicest shade. Her hat was leghorn, broad enough to shade
her eyes from the sun, high enough to add to her importance, and
caught up on one side with a bunch of dull yellow barley and a few
cornflowers, whose vivid hue was repeated in a cluster of the same
flowers embroidered on one side of the bodice. Her large sunshade
was of the same silk as her gown, and that was also embroidered with
cornflowers, a stray blossom flung here and there with an accidental
air.
“My love, you look as if you had stepped out of a fashion book.”
“I suppose I am too smart,” said Juanita with an impatient sigh; “and
yet my colouring is very subdued. There is only that touch of blue
in the cornflowers—just the one high light in the picture. That is
the only drawback to country life. Everything really pretty seems too
smart for dusty roads and green lanes. One must be content to grope
one’s obscure way in a tailor gown or a cotton frock all the year
round. Now this would be perfection for a Wednesday in Hyde Park,
wouldn’t it?”
“My darling, it is charming. Why should you not be prettily dressed
under this blue summer sky? You can sport your tailor gowns in
winter. You are not too smart for me, Nita. You are only too lovely.
Bring your dust cloak, and you may defy the perils of the road.”
Celestine, Lady Carmichael’s French-Swiss maid, was in attendance
with the dust cloak, an ample wrap of creamy silk and lace,
cloudlike, indescribable. This muffled the pretty gown from top to
toe, and Nita took her seat in the phaeton, and prepared for a longer
drive and a longer talk than they had had yesterday.
She was pleased at the idea of showing off her handsome young husband
and her new frock to those advanced young ladies, who had affected a
kind of superiority on the ground of what she called “heavy reading,”
and what they called advanced views. Janet and Sophia had accepted
Lady Cheriton’s invitations with inward protest, and in their
apprehension of being patronized had been somewhat inclined to give
themselves airs, taking pains to impress upon their cousin that she
was as empty-headed as she was beautiful, and that they stood upon an
intellectual plane for which she had no scaling ladder. She had put
up with such small snubbings in the sweetest way, knowing all the
time that as the Honourable Juanita Dalbrook, of Cheriton Chase, and
one of the débutantes whose praises had been sung in all the society
papers, she inhabited a social plane as far beyond their reach as
their intellectual plane might be above hers.
“I don’t suppose we shall see Theodore,” said Juanita, as the bays
bowled merrily along the level road.
The greys were getting a rest after yesterday’s work, and these were
Lady Cheriton’s famous barouche horses, to whom the phaeton seemed a
toy.
“He must have gone to Heidelberg before now,” added Juanita.
“He must be fond of Heidelberg to be running off there when it is so
jolly at home.”
“He was there for a year, you know, before he went to Cambridge, and
he is always going back there or to the Hartz for his holidays. I
sometimes tell him he is half a German.”
She rather hoped that Theodore was in Germany by this time; and yet
she had assured herself in her own mind that there could be no pain
to him in their meeting. She knew that he had loved her—that in
one rash hour, after a year’s absence in America, when he had not
known, or had chosen to forget, the state of affairs between her and
Godfrey, he had told her of his love, and had asked her to give him
hope. It was before her engagement; but she was not the less frank in
confessing her attachment to Godfrey. “I can never care for any one
else,” she said; “I have loved him all my life.”
All her life! Yes, that was Theodore’s irreparable loss. While he,
the working man, had been grinding out his days in the treadmill
round of a country solicitor’s office, the young patrician had
been as free as the butterflies in Juanita’s rose garden; free to
woo her all day long, free to share her most trifling pleasures
and sympathize with her lightest pains. What chance had the junior
partner in Dalbrook & Son against Sir Godfrey Carmichael of Milbrook
Priory?
Theodore had managed his life so well after that one bitter rebuff
that Juanita had a right to suppose that his wound had healed, and
that the pain of that hour had been forgotten. She was sincerely
attached to him, as a kinsman, and respected him more than any other
young man of her acquaintance. Had not Lord Cheriton, that admirable
judge of character, declared that Theodore was one of the cleverest
men he knew, and regretted that he had not attached himself to the
higher branch of the law, as the more likely in his case to result in
wealth and fame?
The phaeton drove up to the old Hanoverian doorway as St. Peter’s
clock chimed the quarter after one. The old man-servant looked
surprised at this brilliant vision of a beautiful girl, a fine
pair of horses, a smart groom, and Sir Godfrey Carmichael. The
_tout-ensemble_ was almost bewildering even to a man accustomed
to see the various conveyances of neighbouring landowners at his
master’s door.
“Yes, my lady, both the young ladies are at home,” said Brown, and
led the way upstairs with unshaken dignity.
He had lived in that house five-and-thirty years, beginning as
shoe-black and errand boy, and he was proud to hear his master tell
his friends how he had risen from the ranks. He had indulged in some
mild philanderings with pretty parlour-maids in the days of his
youth, but had never seriously entangled himself, and was a confirmed
bachelor, and something of a misogynist. He was a pattern of honesty
and conscientiousness, having no wife and family to be maintained
upon broken victuals and illuminated with filched candle-ends or
stolen oil. He had not a single interest outside his master’s house,
hardly so much as a thought; and the glory and honour of “family”
were his honour and glory. So, as he ushered Lady Carmichael and her
husband to the drawing-room, he was meditating upon what additions to
the luncheon he could suggest to cook which might render that meal
worthy of such distinguished guests.
Sophia was seated by one of the windows, painting an orchid in a tall
Venetian vase. It was a weakness with these clever girls to think
they could do everything. They were not content with Darwin and the
new learning, but they painted indifferently in oils and in water
colours, played on various instruments, sang in three languages, and
fancied themselves invincible at lawn tennis.
The orchid was top-heavy, and had been tumbling out of the vase every
five minutes in a manner that had been very trying to the artist’s
temper, and irritating to Janet, who was grappling with a volume of
Johann Müller, in the original, and losing herself in a labyrinth of
words beginning with _ver_ and ending with _heit_.
They both started up from occupations of which both were tired, and
welcomed their visitors with a show of genuine pleasure; for although
they had been very determined in their resistance to anything like
patronage on Juanita’s part when she was Miss Dalbrook, they were
glad that she should be prompt to recognize the claims of kindred now
that she was Lady Carmichael.
“How good of you to come!” exclaimed Janet. “I didn’t think you would
remember us, at such a time.”
“Did you think I must forget old friends because I am happy?” said
Juanita. “But I mustn’t take credit for other people’s virtues. It
was Godfrey who proposed driving over to see you.”
“I wanted to show you what a nice couple we make,” said Sir Godfrey,
gaily, drawing his bride closer to him, as they stood side by side,
tall and straight, and glowing with youth and gladness, in the middle
of the grave old drawing-room. “You young ladies were not so cousinly
as your brother Theodore. _You_ didn’t drive to Cheriton to welcome
us home.”
“If Theo had told us what he was going to do we should have been
very glad to be there too,” replied Sophy, “but he rode off in the
morning without saying a word to anybody.”
“He is in Germany by this time, I suppose?” said Juanita.
“He is downstairs in the office. His portmanteau has been packed for
a week, I believe,” explained Janet, “but there is always some fresh
business to prevent his starting. My father relies upon him more
every day.”
“Dear, good Theodore, he is quite the cleverest man I know,” said
Juanita, without the slightest idea of disparaging her husband, whom
she considered perfection. “I think he must be very much like what my
father was at his age.”
“People who are in a position to know tell us that he is exactly what
his _own_ father was at that age,” said Janet, resenting this attempt
to trace her brother’s gifts to a more distant source. “I don’t see
why one need go further. My father would not have been trusted as he
has been for the last thirty years if he were a simpleton; and Galton
observes——”
The door opened at this moment, and Theodore came in.
He greeted his cousin and his cousin’s husband with unaffected
friendliness.
“It it against my principles to take luncheon,” he said, laughingly,
as he gave Juanita his hand, “but this is a red-letter day. My father
is waiting for us in the dining-room.”
They all went down stairs together, Theodore leading the way with
his cousin, talking gaily as they went down the wide oak staircase,
between sober panelled walls of darkest brown. The front part of the
ground floor was given up to offices, and the dining-room was built
out at the back, a large bright-looking room with a bay window,
opening on to a square town garden, a garden of about half an acre,
surrounded with high walls, above which showed the treetops in
one of the leafy walks that skirt the town. It was very different
to that Italian garden at Cheriton, where the peacocks strutted
slowly between long rows of cypresses, where the Italian statues
showed white in every angle of the dense green wall, and where the
fountain rose and fell with a silvery cadence in the still summer
atmosphere. Here there was only a square lawn, just big enough for a
tennis court, and a broad border of hardy flowers, with one especial
portion at the end of the garden, where Sophia experimented in cross
fertilization after the manner of Darwin, seeming for ever upon the
threshold of valuable discoveries.
Mr. Dalbrook was a fine-looking man of some unascertained age between
fifty and sixty. He boasted that he was Lord Cheriton’s junior by a
year or two, although they had both come to a time of life when a
year or two more or less could matter very little.
He was very fond of Juanita, and he welcomed her with especial
tenderness in her new character as a bride. He kissed her, and then
held her away from him for a minute, with a kindly scrutiny.
“Lady Godfrey surpasses Miss Dalbrook,” he said, smiling at the
girl’s radiant face. “I suppose now you are going to be the leading
personage in our part of the county. We quiet townspeople will be
continually hearing of you, and there will not be a local paper
without a notice of your doings. Anyhow, I am glad you don’t forget
old friends.”
He placed her beside him at the large oval table, on which the
handsomest plate and the eldest china had been set forth with a
celerity which testified to Brown’s devotion. Mr. Dalbrook was one of
those sensible people who never waste keep or wages upon a bad horse
or a bad servant, whereby his cook was one of the best in Dorchester;
so the luncheon, albeit plain and unpretentious, was a meal of which
no man need feel ashamed.
Juanita was fond of her uncle, as she called this distant cousin of
hers, to distinguish him from the younger generation, and she was
pleased to be sitting by him, and hearing all the news of the county
town and the county people who were his clients, and in many cases
his friends. It may be that his cousinship with Lord Cheriton had
gone as far as his professional acumen to elevate him in the esteem
of town and county, and that some people who would hardly have
invited the provincial solicitor for own sake, sent their cards as a
matter of course to the law lord’s cousin. But there were others who
esteemed Matthew Dalbrook for his own sterling qualities, and who
even liked him better than the somewhat severe and self-assertive
Lord Cheriton.
While Juanita talked confidentially to her kinsman, and while Sir
Godfrey discussed the latest theory about the sun, and the probable
endurance of our own little planet, with Janet and Sophia, Theodore
sat at the bottom of the table, silent and thoughtful, watching the
lovely animated face with its look of radiant happiness, and telling
himself that the woman he loved was as far away from him sitting
there, within reach of his touch, within the sound of his lowest
whisper, as if she had been in another world. He had borne himself
bravely on her wedding-day, and smiled back her happy smile, and
clasped her hand with a steady grin of friendship; but after that
ordeal there had been a sad relapse in his fortitude, and he had
thought of her ever since as a man thinks of that supreme possession
without which life is worthless—as the miser thinks of his stolen
gold—or the ambitious man of his blighted name.
Yes, he had loved her with all the strength of his heart and mind,
and he knew that he could never again love with the same full
measure. He was too wise a man, and too experienced in life, to tell
himself that for him time could have no healing power—that no other
woman could ever be dear to him; but he told himself that another
love like unto this was impossible, and that all the future could
bring him would be some pale faint copy of this radiant picture.
“I suppose it’s only one man in fifty who marries his first love,” he
thought; and then he looked at Godfrey Carmichael and thought that
to him overmuch had been given. He was a fine young fellow, clever,
unassuming, with a frank good face; a man who was liked by men as
well as by women; but what had he done to be worthy of such a wife
as Juanita? Theodore could only answer the question in the words of
Figaro, “He had taken the trouble to be born.”
That one thoughtful guest made no difference in the gaiety of the
luncheon table. Matthew Dalbrook had plenty to say to his beautiful
cousin, and Juanita had all the experiences of the last season to
talk about, while once having started upon Sir William Thomson and
the ultimate exhaustion of the sun’s heat, the sisters were not
likely to stop.