ALL ALONG THE RIVER
A Novel
BY THE AUTHOR OF
“ISHMAEL,” “VIXEN,” “LADY AUDLEY’S SECRET,”
“THE VENETIANS,” Etc.
Stereotyped Edition
LONDON
SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, HAMILTON, KENT & CO.
LIMITED
STATIONERS’ HALL COURT
[_All rights reserved_]
LONDON:
PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED,
STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER PAGE
I. “The Rain set early in To-night” 1
II. “But the Days drop One by One” 18
III. “Oh Moment One and Infinite!” 33
IV. “Dreaming, she knew it was a Dream” 50
V. “And the Child-cheek blushing Scarlet for the very Shame
of Bliss” 61
VI. “A Love still burning upward” 73
VII. “Look through mine Eyes with thine, True Wife” 91
VIII. My Frolic Falcon, with Bright Eyes 99
IX. “Lies Nothing buried long ago?” 114
X. “Of the Weak my Heart is Weakest” 124
XI. “Where the Cold Sea raves” 142
XII. “Far, too far off for Thought or any Prayer” 153
XIII. “Under the Pine-wood, Blind with Boughs” 159
XIV. “Say the False Charge was True” 169
XV. “My Life continues yours, and your Life mine” 186
XVI. “Sorrow that’s Deeper than we dream, perchance” 197
XVII. “The Year of the Rose is Brief” 202
XVIII. “No Sudden Fancy of an Ardent Boy” 207
XIX. “I have you still, the Sun comes out again” 222
XX. “Thou Paradise of Exiles, Italy” 230
XXI. “The Woods are round us, Heaped and Dim” 241
XXII. Ecco Roma 248
XXIII. “Seek Shelter in the Shadow of the Tomb” 255
XXIV. “Oh, Old Thoughts they cling, they cling!” 267
XXV. “We’ll bind you Fast in Silken Cords” 273
XXVI. “So, Full Content shall henceforth be my Lot” 282
XXVII. “Gone Deeper than all Plummets sound” 292
XXVIII. “Though Love and Life and Death should come and go” 301
XXIX. “I, you, and God can comprehend each other” 318
ALL ALONG THE RIVER.
CHAPTER I.
“THE RAIN SET EARLY IN TO-NIGHT.”
It had been raining all the morning, and it was raining still, in that
feeble and desultory manner which presages a change of some kind, when
the postman came with the long-expected Indian letter.
He was later than usual. It was nearly two o’clock, and Isola had been
watching for him since one, watching with an unread book in her lap,
listening for the click of the gate. She had been sitting by the open
window, looking out at the wet landscape, the glistening hedgerow and
dull grey river, with the great, green hill beyond, a steep slope of
meadow land, dotted with red cattle, and so divided by hedgerows, as to
look like a Titanic chessboard.
At last she heard the familiar tread of the postman’s heavy boots, and
saw his shining oilskin hat moving above the edge of the hollies, and
heard the click of the iron latch as he came into the little garden.
She called to him from the window, and he came tramping across the
sodden grass and put three letters into her outstretched hand.
One from her married sister in Hans Place. That would keep. One from an
old schoolfellow. That would keep. And one--the long-looked-for Indian
letter, which she tore open eagerly, and read hurriedly, devouring
the close lines, in the neat, black penmanship, with its decided
up and down strokes, and legible characters, so firm, so strong, so
straightforward, like the nature of the man who wrote the letter.
The tears sprang to her eyes as she came to the end, and her hands
crushed the thin paper in a paroxysm of vexation or despair.
“Six months--perhaps a year, before he can come back, and I am to go
on living here--alone, unless I like to send for a girl whose face I
hardly know, to keep me company, and cheer me with her good spirits. I
want no strange girls. I want no one’s good spirits. I hate people with
good spirits. I want him, and nobody but him! It is hard that we should
be parted like this. I ought to have gone with him, in spite of all the
doctors in Christendom.”
She relented towards the letter which her feverish hand had used so
badly. She smoothed out the flimsy paper carefully with that pretty
little hand, and then she re-read the husband’s letter, so full of
grave tenderness and fond, consoling words.
He was with his regiment in Burmah, and the present aspect of things
gave him no hope of being able to return to England for the next
half-year, and there was no certainty that the half-year might not be
stretched into a whole year. The separation could not be more irksome
to his dearest Isola than it was to him, her husband of little more
than a year: but not for worlds would he have exposed her to the risks
of that climate. He took comfort in thinking of her in the snug little
Cornish nest, with his good Tabitha.
Isola kissed the letter before she put it in her pocket, and then she
looked round the room rather dolefully, as if the Cornish nest were
not altogether paradise. And yet it was a pretty little room enough,
half dining-room, half study, with handsomely bound books on carved oak
shelves, and photographs and bright draperies, and cosily cushioned
bamboo chairs, and a bird-cage, and a Persian cat. Nor was the garden
outside flowerless, even on the threshold of winter. The purple
blossoms of the veronica were untouched by frost; there were pale tea
roses gleaming yonder against the dark gloss of holly and laurel. There
were single dahlias of vividest red, like flaming stars; and close
under the open window, last splendour of departed summer, the waxen
chalice of a golden lily trembled on its tall stem, and filled the room
with perfume.
The rain was over--the monotonous drip, drip, which had irritated
Isola’s nerves all that morning, had ceased at last. She left the
modest little lunch untouched upon the table, and went out into the
hall, where her hat and jacket hung handy for any impromptu ramble.
No need to look at one’s self in the glass before going out of doors,
at twenty years of age, and in such a place as Trelasco. Isola took
her stick from the stand, a green orange stick, bought in the sunny
South, on her way to Venice with her husband last year--a leisurely
trip, which had been to them as a second honeymoon after a few happy
months of wedlock. Then had come the sadness of parting, and a swift
and lonely journey for the young wife--a lonely return to the Angler’s
Nest, Trelasco, that cosy cottage between Lostwithiel and Fowey, which
Major Disney had bought and furnished before his marriage. He was a
son of the soil, and he had chosen to pitch his tent in that remote
spot for the sake of old associations, and from a fixed belief that
there was no locality of equal merit for health, beauty, and all other
virtues which a man should seek in his home.
Isola rarely touched that stick without remembering the day it was
bought--a rainy day in Milan--just such a day as this, a low, grey sky,
and an oppressive mildness of atmosphere. She remembered, with the sick
pain that goes with long partings, how she and her husband had dawdled
away an afternoon in the Victor Emmanuel Gallery, buying handkerchiefs
and neckties, a book or two, a collection of photographs, and finally
the orange stick.
She went out to walk down her depression before teatime, if possible.
She went along a narrow path by the river, then turned into a road
that skirted those green pastures which rose sheer till the ragged edge
of the topmost boundary seemed to touch the dim, grey sky. She passed
the village inn, deadly quiet at this season and at this hour. She
passed the half-dozen decent cottages, and the three or four genteeler
houses, each in its neatly kept garden, and she walked with quick,
light step along the wet road, her useful tailor-gown well clear of the
mud, her stick striking the hedgerow now and then, as she swung it to
and fro in dreamy thought.
A long, lonely winter to look forward to--a winter like the last--with
her books and drawing-board, and her cottage piano, and the cat and the
fox-terrier, and Tabitha for her daily companions. There were a few
neighbours within a radius of half a dozen miles, who had been very
civil to her; who called upon her, say once in six weeks; who sometimes
invited her to a stately dinner-party, and sometimes at a suspiciously
short notice, which made her feel she was wanted to fill a gap; who
made her free of their tennis lawns; and who talked to her on Sundays
after church, and were always very particular in inquiring for news
from India. There was not one among them for whom she cared; not one
to whom she would have liked to pour out her thoughts about Keats or
Shelley, or to whom she would have confided her opinion of Byron. She
was more interested in Bulwer’s “Audley Egerton” than in any of those
flesh and blood neighbours. She was happier sitting by her chimney
corner with a novel than in the best society available within a drive
of Trelasco.
She struck off the high road into a lane, a lane that led to the base
of a wilder hill than that where the red cattle were grazing. The
crest of the hill was common land, and dark fir-trees made a ragged
line against the autumn sky, and the view from the summit was wide and
varied, with a glimpse of the great brown cliffs and the dark, grey
sea far off to the west, to that dim distance where the Dodman shut
off the watery way to the new world. On the landward slope of that
wild-looking ridge was the Mount, Lord Lostwithiel’s place, uninhabited
for the greater part of the year except by servants, his lordship being
the very last kind of man to bury himself alive in a remote Cornish
fastness, a long day’s journey from the London theatres, and the R.Y.S.
Clubhouse at Cowes.
Who was Lord Lostwithiel? Well, in the estimation of Trelasco he was
the only nobleman in England, or say that he was to all other peers as
the sun to the planets. He belonged to Trelasco by reason of his large
landed estate and the accident of his birth, which had taken place
at the Mount; and, although his character and way of life were not
altogether satisfactory to the village mind, Trelasco made the best of
him.
Isola Disney climbed the hill, an easy matter to light-footed twenty.
She stood amidst the tall fir columns, and looked down at the November
landscape, very distinctly defined in the soft, grey atmosphere. She
could see the plough moving slowly across the red earth in the fields
below, the clumsy farm horses, white against the deep, rich red. She
could see the winding river, bluish grey, between its willowy banks,
and far off beyond Fowey there rose the wooded hills, where the foliage
showed orange and tawny and russet between the blue-grey water and the
pale grey sky.
She loved this lonely hill, and felt her spirits rise in this lighter
atmosphere as she stood resting against the scaly trunk of a Scotch
fir, with the wind blowing her hair. It was a relief to escape from the
silence of those empty rooms, where she had only the sleepy Persian or
the hyper-intelligent fox-terrier for company. There was a longer and
more picturesque way home than that by which she had come. She could
descend the other side of the hill, skirt the gardens of the Mount, by
a path that led through the Park to a lodge gate on the Fowey road. It
was one of her favourite walks, and she was so accustomed to seeing the
shutters closed at the great house that she never expected to meet any
one more alarming than a farm-servant or a cottager’s child.
There was a thick chestnut copse upon one side, and the wide expanse
of undulating turf, with an occasional clump of choice timber, upon
the other. The house stood on higher ground than the park, but was
hemmed in and hidden by shrubberies that had overgrown the intention
of the landscape gardener who planned them. Only the old grey-stone
gables, with their heavy slabs of slate, and the tall, clustered
chimneys, showed above the copper beeches, and deodaras, the laurels,
and junipers, and Irish yews, and the shining masses of arbutus with
crimson berries gleaming amongst the green. Isola had never seen that
old Manor House nearer than she saw it to-day, from the path, which
was a public right of way through the park. She knew that the greater
part of the building dated from the reign of Charles the Second, but
that there were older bits; and that about the whole, and about those
ancient rooms and passages most especially, there were legends and
traditions and historical associations, not without the suspicion of
ghosts. The Mount was not a show place, like the home of the Treffrys
at Fowey, and of late years it had been very seldom inhabited, except
by certain human fossils who had served the house of Hulbert for two
generations. She had often looked longingly at those quaint old gables,
those clustered stone chimneys, likening the house amidst its overgrown
shrubberies to the Palace of the Sleeping Beauty, and had wished that
she were on friendly terms with one of those drowsy old retainers.
“I dare say if I were daring enough to open one of the doors and go in
I should find them all asleep,” she thought, “and I might roam all over
the house without awakening anybody.” She was too depressed to-day to
give more than a careless, unseeing glance at those many gables as she
walked along the muddy path beside the dripping copse. The chestnut
boughs were nearly bare, but here and there clusters of bright yellow
leaves were still hanging, shining like pale gold in the last watery
gleams of the sun; and though the leaves were lying sodden and brown
among the rank, wet grass, there were emerald mosses and cool, green
ferns, and red and orange fungi to give colour to the foreground, and
to the little vistas that opened here and there amidst the underwood.
Those final yellow gleams were fading low down in the western sky as
Isola turned her face towards the river and the Angler’s Nest, and just
above that pale radiance there stretched a dense black cloud, like a
monstrous iron bar, which she felt must mean mischief. She looked at
that black line apprehensively. She was three miles from home, without
cloak or umbrella, and with no available shelter within three-quarters
of a mile.
She quickened her pace, watching the fading light and lowering cloud,
expecting thunder, lightning, hail, she knew not what. A sudden deluge
settled the question. Torrential rain! That was the meaning of the inky
bar above the setting sun. She looked round her helplessly. Should she
dart into the copse, and try to shelter herself amidst those leafless
twigs, those slender withies and saplings? Better to face the storm
and plod valiantly on. Her neat little cloth gown would not be much
the worse for a ducking; her neat little feet were accustomed to rapid
walking. Should she run? No; useless when there were three miles to
be got over. A brisk, steady tramp would be better. But, brave as she
was, that fierce rain was far from pleasant. It cut into her eyes and
blinded her. She had to grope her way along the path with her stick.
“Pray let me take you to the house,” said a voice close beside her, a
man’s voice--low and deep, and with the accents of refinement.
Could one of Lord Lostwithiel’s fossilized servants talk like that?
Impossible. She looked up, as well as she could, under that blinding
downpour, and saw a tall man standing beside the pathway with his back
to the copse. He was over six feet two and of slim, active figure. He
was pale, and wore a short, dark beard, and the eyes which looked at
Isola out of the pale, thin face were very dark. That was about as much
as she could see of the stranger in the November dusk.
“Pray let me persuade you to come to the house,” he said urgently. “You
are being drenched. It is absolutely dreadful to see anybody out in
such rain--and there is no other shelter within reach. Let me take you
there. My housekeeper will dry your hat and jacket for you. I ought to
introduce myself, perhaps. I am Lord Lostwithiel.”
She had guessed as much. Who else would speak with authority in that
place? She dimly recalled a photograph, pale and faded, of a tall man
in a yeomanry uniform, seen in somebody’s album; and the face of the
photograph had been the same elongated oval face--with long thin nose,
and dark eyes a shade too near together--which was looking down at her
now.
She felt it would be churlish to refuse shelter so earnestly offered.
“You are very kind,” she faltered. “I am sorry to be so troublesome. I
ought not to have come so far in such doubtful weather.”
She went with him meekly, walking her fastest under the pelting rain,
which was at her back now as they made for the house.
“Have you really come far?” he asked.
“From Trelasco. I live at the Angler’s Nest, a cottage by the river.
You know it, perhaps?”
“Yes. I know every house at Trelasco. Then you are staying with Mrs.
Disney, I presume?”
“I am Mrs. Disney.”
“You?”--with intense surprise. “I beg your pardon. You are so young. I
imagined Mrs. Disney an older person.”
He glanced at the girlish figure, the pale delicate face, and told
himself that his new acquaintance could scarcely be more than nineteen
or twenty. He had met Major Disney, a man who looked about forty--a
lucky fellow to have caught such a pretty bird as this.
They had reached the shrubbery by this time, and were hurrying along
a winding walk where the rain reached them with less violence. The
narrow walk brought them on to a broad terrace in front of the house.
Lostwithiel opened a half-glass door, and led Mrs. Disney into the
library, a long, low room, full of curious nooks and corners, formed by
two massive chimney-pieces, and by the projecting wings of the heavy
oak bookcases. Isola had never seen any room so filled with books, nor
had she ever seen a room with two such chimney-pieces, of statuary
marble, yellowed with age, elaborately carved with cherubic heads, and
Cupids, and torches and festal wreaths, bows and arrows, lyres and urns.
A wood fire was burning upon one hearth, and it was hither Lostwithiel
brought his guest, wheeling a large armchair in front of the blaze.
“If you will take off your hat and jacket, and sit down there, I’ll get
my housekeeper to attend to you,” he said, with his hand upon the bell.
“You are more than kind. I must hurry home directly the rain abates a
little. I have a careful old servant who is sure to be anxious about
me,” said Isola, devouring the room with her eyes, wanting to take in
every detail of this enchanted castle.
She might never enter it again, perhaps. Lord Lostwithiel was so seldom
there. His absenteeism was the lament of the neighbourhood. The things
he ought to have done and did not do would have filled a book. He had
been wild in his youth. He had once owned a theatre. He had done, or
was supposed to have done, things which were spoken of with bated
breath; but of late years he had developed new ambitions, and had done
with theatrical speculations. He had become literary, scientific,
political. He was one of the lights of the intellectual world, or of
that small section of the intellectual world which is affiliated to the
smart world. He knew all the clever people in London, and a good many
of the intellectualities of Paris, Berlin, and Vienna. He had never
married; but it was supposed that he would eventually marry, before he
was forty, for instance, and that he would make a great match. He was
not rich, but he was Lord Lostwithiel. He was by no means handsome, but
he was said to be one of the most fascinating men in London.
Isola pulled off her jacket slowly, looking about her all the time; and
Lostwithiel forbore from offering her any assistance, lest he should
intensify her evident shyness.
A man in plain clothes, who looked more like a valet than a butler,
answered the bell.
“Send Mrs. Mayne, and bring tea,” ordered his lordship.
What a slender, girlish form it was which the removal of the tweed
jacket revealed! The slim waist and somewhat narrow shoulders betokened
a delicacy of constitution. The throat was beautiful, milk white, the
throat of Diana, and the head, now the hat was off, would also have
done for Diana; a small classic head, with soft, brown hair drawn
smoothly away from the low, white brow and rolled into a knot at the
back. The features were as delicate as the complexion, in which there
was no brilliancy of colouring, only a paleness as of ivory. The eyes
were dark grey, with long, brown lashes, and their present expression
was between anxiety and wondering interest. Lostwithiel was not such a
coxcomb as to appropriate that look of interest. He saw that it was his
house and not himself which inspired the feeling.
“You like old houses, I can see, Mrs. Disney,” he said, smiling at her.
“Intensely. They are histories in brick and stone, are they not? I dare
say there are stories about this room.”
“Innumerable stories. I should have to ransack the Record Office for
some of them, and to draw upon a very bad memory to a perilous extent
for others.”
“Is it haunted?”
“I am not one of those privileged persons who see ghosts; neither
seventh son of a seventh son, nor of the mediumistic temperament; but
I have heard of an apparition pervading the house on occasions, and
being seen in this room, which once formed part of a certain small
monastery, put down by Henry VIII., and recorded in the Black Book. As
one of the oldest rooms it is naturally uncanny; but as I have never
suffered any inconvenience in that line, I make it my den.”
“It is the most picturesque room I ever saw. And what a multitude of
books!” exclaimed Isola.
“Yes; I have a good many books. I am always buying; but I find I never
have exactly the book I want. And as I have no librarian I am too apt
to forget the books I have. If I could afford to spend more of my life
at the Mount, I would engage some learned gentleman, whose life had
been a failure, to take care of my books. Are you Cornish, like your
husband, Mrs. Disney?”
“No. I was born at Dinan.”
“What! in that mediæval Breton city? You are not French, though, I
think?”
“My mother and father were both English, but my sister and I were born
and brought up in Brittany.”
Lostwithiel questioned no further. He had a shrewd idea that when
English people live for a good many years in a Breton town they have
reasons of their own, generally financial, for their choice of a
settlement. He was a man who could not have spent six months of his
life away from London or Paris.
The housekeeper made her appearance and offered her services. She wrung
the rain out of Isola’s cloth skirt, and wiped the muddy hem. She took
charge of the jacket and hat, and at Lostwithiel’s suggestion she
remained to pour out the tea. She was a dignified person, in a black
silk gown and a lace cap, and she treated her master as if he had been
a demi-god. Isola could not be afraid of taking tea in this matronly
presence, yet she kept looking nervously towards the window in front of
her, where the rain beat with undiminished force, and where the night
was closing in.
“I see you are anxious to be on your way home, Mrs. Disney,” said
Lostwithiel, who had nothing to do but watch her face, such an
expressive face at all times, so picturesquely beautiful when touched
by the flickering light of the wood fire. “If you were to wait for
fine weather you might be here all night, and your good people at home
would be frantic. I’ll order a carriage, and you can be at home in
three-quarters of an hour.”
“Oh no, Lord Lostwithiel, I couldn’t give you so much trouble. If your
housekeeper will be so kind as to lend me a cloak and umbrella, I can
get home very well. And I had better start at once.”
“In the rain, alone, and in the darkness? It will be dark before you
are home, in any case. No, Mrs. Disney, if I were to permit such a
thing I should expect Major Disney to call me out directly he came
home. He is in India, I think?”
“He is with his regiment in Burmah.”
“Do you expect him home soon?”
“Not very soon; not for six months, or perhaps longer. It was that
which made me walk so far.”
Lostwithiel looked puzzled.
“I mean that I was so disappointed by his letter--a letter I received
to-day--that I went out for a long ramble to walk down my bad spirits,
and hardly knew how far I was going. It has made me inflict trouble on
you, and Mrs.----”
“Mayne. Both Mrs. Mayne and I are delighted to be of use to you. Order
the station brougham, Dalton, immediately,” to the man who answered his
bell. “The carriage can hardly be ready in less than twenty minutes, so
pray try to do justice to Mrs. Mayne’s tea.”
“It is delicious tea,” said Isola, enjoying the fire-glow, and the
dancing lights upon the richly bound books in all their varieties of
colouring, from black and crimson and orange-tawny to vellum diapered
with gold.
She was evidently relieved in her mind by the knowledge that she was to
be driven home presently.
“If you are really interested in this old house you must come some
sunny morning and let Mrs. Mayne show you over it,” said Lostwithiel,
establishing himself with his cup and saucer upon the other side of the
hearth. “She knows all the old stories, and she has a better memory
than I.”
“I should like so much to do so next summer, when my husband can come
with me.”
“I’m afraid Major Disney won’t care much about the old place. He is a
native of these parts, and must have been here often in my father’s
time. I shall hope to receive you both, if I am here next October for
the shooting--but there is no need to postpone your inspection of the
house to the remote future. Come on the first fine morning that you
have nothing better to do. Mrs. Mayne is always at home; and I am
almost always out of doors in the morning. You can have the house to
yourselves, and talk about ghosts to your hearts’ content.”
“Oh, my lord, I hope I know better than to say anything disrespectful
of the house,” protested Mrs. Mayne.
“My dear Mayne, a family ghost is as respectable an institution as a
family tree.”
Isola murmured some vague acknowledgment of his civility. She was far
too shy to have any idea of taking advantage of his offer. To re-enter
that house alone of her own accord would be impossible. By-and-by, with
her husband at her side, she would be bold enough to do anything, to
accept any hospitality that Lostwithiel might be moved to offer. He
would invite Martin, perhaps, for the shooting, or to a luncheon, or
a dinner. She wondered vaguely if she would ever possess a gown good
enough to wear at a dinner-party in such a house.
After this there came a brief silence. Mrs. Mayne stood straight and
prim behind the tea-table. Nothing would have induced her to sit in
his lordship’s presence, albeit she had dandled him in her arms when
there was much less of him than of the cambric and fine flannel which
composed his raiment, and albeit his easy familiarity might have
invited some forgetfulness of class distinctions. Mrs. Mayne fully
understood that she was wanted there to set the stranger at her ease,
and she performed her mission; but even her presence could not lessen
Isola’s shyness. She felt like a bird caught in a net, or fluttering
in the grasp of some strong but kindly hand. She sat listening for
carriage wheels, and only hearing the dull thumping of her own scared
heart.
And yet he was so kind, and yet he so fully realized her idea of
high-bred gentleness, that she need hardly have been so troubled by the
situation. She stole a glance at him as he stood by the chimney-piece,
in a thoughtful attitude, looking down at the burning logs on the
massive old andirons. The firelight shining on a face above it will
often give a sinister look to the openest countenance; and to-night
Lostwithiel’s long, narrow face, dark, deep-set eyes, and pointed beard
had some touch of the diabolical in that red and uncertain glow; an
effect that was but instantaneous, for as the light changed the look
passed, and she saw him as he really was, with his pale and somewhat
sunken cheeks, and eyes darkly grave, of exceeding gentleness.
“Have you lived long at the Angler’s Nest, Mrs. Disney?” he asked.
“Nearly a year and a half; ever since my marriage, with just one
interval on the Continent before Martin went to India.”
“Then I need not ask if you are heartily sick of the place?”
“Indeed, I should not be tired of the cottage or the neighbourhood if
my husband were at home. I am only tired of solitude. He wants me to
send for his sister--a girl who has not long left school--to keep me
company; but I detest school-girls, and I would much rather be alone
than put up with a silly companion.”
“You are wise beyond your years, Mrs. Disney. Avoid the sister, by all
means. She would bore you to death--a scampering, exuberant girl, who
would develop hysteria after one month of Cornish dulness. Besides,
I am sure you have resources of your own, and that you would rather
endure solitude than uncongenial company.”
Isola sighed, and shook her head rather dolefully, tracing the pattern
of the Persian rug with the point of her stick.
“I am very fond of books, and of music,” she said; “but one gets tired
of being alone after a time. It seems such ages since Martin and I said
good-bye in Venice. I was dreadfully unhappy at first. I stand almost
alone in the world, when I am parted from him.”
“Your father and mother are dead?” in gentlest inquiry.
“Oh no; they are not dead; they are at Dinan,” she said, almost as if
it were the same thing.
“And that is very far from Trelasco.”
“They never leave Dinan. The kind of life suits them. Mamma knits;
papa has his club and his English newspapers. People enjoy the English
papers so much more when they live abroad than when they are at home.
Mamma is a very bad sailor. It would be a risk for her to cross. If my
sister or I were dangerously ill, mamma would come. But it would be at
the hazard of her life. Papa has often told me so.”
“And your father, is he a bad sailor?”
“He is rather worse than mamma.”
“Then I conclude you were married at Dinan?”
“Oh yes; I never left Brittany until my wedding-day.”
“What a pretty idea! It is as if Major Disney had found a new kind of
wild flower in some cranny of the old grey wall that guards the town.”
“You know Dinan?”
“There are very few places within easy reach of a yachtsman that I
don’t know. I have anchored in almost every bay between Cherbourg and
Brest, and have rambled inland whenever there was anything worth seeing
within a day’s journey from the coast. Yes, I know Dinan well. Strange
to think that I may have passed you in the street there. Do you sketch,
by the way?”
“A little.”
“Ah, then, perhaps you are one of the young ladies I have seen sitting
at street corners, or under archways, doing fearful and wonderful
things with a box of moist colours and a drawing-board.”
“The young ladies who sit about the streets are tourists,” said Isola,
with a look of disgust.
“I understand. The resident ladies would no more do such things than
they would sit upon the pavement and make pictures of salmon or
men-of-war in coloured chalks, like our Metropolitan artists.”
“I think I hear a carriage,” said Isola, putting down her cup and
saucer, and looking at her jacket, which Mrs. Mayne was holding before
the fire.
“Yes, that is the carriage,” answered Lostwithiel, opening the glass
door. “What a night! The rain is just as bad as it was when I brought
you indoors.”
“If you will accept the use of a shawl, ma’am, it would be safer than
putting on this damp jacket.”
“Yes, Mayne, get your shawl. Mrs. Disney will wear it, I know.”
The housekeeper bustled out, and Lostwithiel and his guest were alone,
looking at each other somewhat helplessly, as they stood far apart,
she in the glow of the hearth, he in the darkness near the door,
and feeling that every available subject of conversation had been
exhausted. Their embarrassment was increased when Dalton and a footman
came in with two great lamps and flooded the room with light.
“I hardly know how to thank you for having taken so much trouble about
me,” Isola faltered presently, under that necessity to say something
which is one of the marks of shyness.
“There has been no trouble. I only hope I got you out of that pelting
rain in time to save you from any evil consequences. Strange that our
acquaintance should begin in such an accidental manner. I shall be glad
to know more of Major Disney when he comes home, and in the meantime
I hope I shall have the pleasure of meeting you sometimes. No doubt
you know everybody in the neighbourhood, so we can hardly help running
against each other somewhere.”
Isola smiled faintly, thinking that the chances of any such meeting
were of the slightest; but she did not gainsay him. He wanted to say
something courteous no doubt, and had gone into no nice question of
probabilities before he spoke. She had heard him described by a good
many people, who had hinted darkly at his shortcomings, but had all
agreed as to his politeness and persuasive powers.
“A man who would talk over Satan himself,” said the village lawyer.
Mrs. Mayne reappeared with a comfortable Scotch plaid, which she
wrapped carefully about Mrs. Disney, in a pleasant, motherly fashion.
The rain had all been shaken off the little felt hat, which had no
feathers or frippery to spoil. People who live in the west of England
make their account with wet weather.
Lord Lostwithiel handed his guest into the carriage, and stood
bareheaded in the rain to wish her good-bye before he shut the door.
“I shall be very anxious to know that you have escaped cold,” he said,
at the last moment. “I hope you won’t think me a nuisance if I call
to-morrow to inquire.”
He shut the door quickly, and the brougham drove off before she
could answer. She was alone in the darkness in the snug, warm little
carriage. There was a clock ticking beside her, a sound that startled
her in the stillness. There was a basket hanging in front of her, and
an odour of cigars and Russia leather. There was a black bear rug,
lined with white fleeciness, which almost filled the carriage. She
had never sat in such a carriage. How different from the mouldy old
brougham in which she occasionally went to dinner-parties--a capacious
vehicle with a bow window, like a seaside parlour!
She leant back in a corner of the little carriage, wrapped in the soft,
warm rug, wondering at her strange adventure. She had penetrated that
mysterious house on Black-fir Hill, and she had made the acquaintance
of Lord Lostwithiel. How much she would have to tell Martin in her next
letter! She wrote to him every week--a long, loving letter, closely
written on thin paper, pouring out all her fancies and feelings to the
husband she loved with all her heart.
She sighed as her thoughts recurred to the letter received to-day. Six
months, or perhaps even a year, before he was to come back to her! Yet
the letter had not been without hopefulness. He had the prospect of
getting his next step before that year was over, and then his coming
home would be a final return. He would be able to retire, and he would
buy some land--a hundred acres or so--and breed horses--one of his
youthful dreams--and do a little building, perhaps, to enlarge and
beautify the Angler’s Nest, and his Isola should have a pair of ponies
and a good saddle-horse. He looked forward to a life of unalloyed
happiness.