IN WHICH DORCAS BRANDON SPEAKS.
In answer to 'the roaring shiver of the gong' we all trooped away
together to luncheon. Lady Chelford and Dorcas and Chelford had nearly
ended that irregular repast when we entered. My chair was beside Miss
Brandon; she had breakfasted with old Lady Chelford that morning, and
this was my first meeting that day. It was not very encouraging.
People complained that acquaintance made little way with her. That you
were, perhaps, well satisfied with your first day's progress, but the
next made no head-way; you found yourself this morning exactly at the
point from which you commenced yesterday, and to-morrow would recommence
where you started the day before. This is very disappointing, but may
sometimes be accounted for by there being nothing really to discover. It
seemed to me, however, that the distance had positively increased since
yesterday, and that the oftener she met me the more strange she became.
As we went out, Wylder enquired, with his usual good taste: 'Well, what
do you think of her?' Then he looked slily at me, laughing, with his
hands in his pockets. 'A little bit slow, eh?' he whispered, and laughed
again, and lounged into the hall. If Dorcas Brandon had been a plain
woman, I think she would have been voted an impertinent bore; but she was
so beautiful that she became an enigma. I looked at her as she stood
gravely gazing from the window. Is it Lady Macbeth? No; she never would
have had energy to plan her husband's career and manage that affair of
Duncan. A sultana rather--sublimely egotistical, without reverence--a
voluptuous and haughty embodiment of indifference. I paused, looking at a
picture, but thinking of her, and was surprised by her voice very near
me.
'Will you give me just a minute, Mr. De Cresseron, in the drawing-room,
while I show you a miniature? I want your opinion.'
So she floated on and I accompanied her.
'I think,' she said, 'you mentioned yesterday, that you remembered me
when an infant. You remember my poor mamma, don't you, very well?'
This was the first time she had yet shown any tendency, so far as I had
seen, to be interested in anything, or to talk to me. I seized the
occasion, and gave her, as well as I could, the sad and pretty picture
that remained, and always will, in the vacant air, when I think of her,
on the mysterious retina of memory.
How filmy they are! the moonlight shines through them, as through the
phantom Dane in Retzch's outlines--colour without substance. How they
come, wearing for ever the sweetest and pleasantest look of their earthly
days. Their sweetest and merriest tones hover musically in the distance;
how far away, how near to silence, yet how clear! And so it is with our
remembrance of the immortal part. It is the loveliest traits that remain
with us perennially; all that was noblest and most beautiful is there, in
a changeless and celestial shadow; and this is the resurrection of the
memory, the foretaste and image which the 'Faithful Creator' accords us
of the resurrection and glory to come--the body redeemed, the spirit made
perfect.
On a cabinet near to where she stood was a casket of ormolu, which she
unlocked, and took out a miniature, opened, and looked at it for a long
time. I knew very well whose it was, and watched her countenance; for, as
I have said, she interested me strangely. I suppose she knew I was
looking at her; but she showed always a queenlike indifference about what
people might think or observe. There was no sentimental softening; but
her gaze was such as I once saw the same proud and handsome face turn
upon the dead--pale, exquisite, perhaps a little stern. What she read
there--what procession of thoughts and images passed by--threw neither
light nor shadow on her face. Its apathy interested me inscrutably.
At last she placed the picture in my hand, and asked--
'Is this really very like her?'
'It is, and it is _not_,' I said, after a little pause. 'The features are
true: it is what I call an accurate portrait, but that is all. I dare
say, exact as it is, it would give to one who had not seen her a false,
as it must an inadequate, idea, of the original. There was something
_naïve_ and _spirituel_, and very tender in her face, which he has not
caught--perhaps it could hardly be fixed in colours.'
'Yes, I always heard her expression and intelligence were very beautiful.
It was the beauty of mobility--true beauty.'
'There is a beauty of another stamp, equally exquisite, Miss Brandon, and
perhaps more overpowering.' I said this in nearly a whisper, and in a
very marked way, almost tender, and the next moment was amazed at my own
audacity. She looked on me for a second or two, with her dark drowsy
glance, and then it returned to the picture, which was again in her hand.
There was a total want of interest in the careless sort of surprise she
vouchsafed my little sally; neither was there the slightest resentment.
If a wafer had been stuck upon my forehead, and she had observed it,
there might have been just that look and no more. I was ridiculously
annoyed with myself. I was betrayed, I don't know how, into this little
venture, and it was a flat failure. The position of a shy man, who has
just made an unintelligible joke at a dinner-table, was not more pregnant
with self-reproach and embarrassment.
Upon my honour, I don't think there was anything of the _roué_ in me. I
own I did feel towards this lady, who either was, or seemed to me, so
singular, a mysterious interest just beginning--of that peculiar kind
which becomes at last terribly absorbing.
I was more elated by her trifling notice of me than I can quite account
for. It was a distinction. She was so indescribably handsome--so
passively disdainful. I think if she had listened to me with even the
faintest intimation of caring whether I spoke in this tone or not, with
even a flash of momentary resentment, I might have rushed into a most
reprehensible and ridiculous rigmarole.
In this, the subtlest and most perilous of all intoxications, it needs
immense presence of mind to conduct ourselves always with decorum. But
she was looking, just as before, at the miniature, as it seemed to me, in
fancy infusing some of the spirit I had described into the artist's
record, and she said, only in soliloquy, as it were, 'Yes, I see--I
_think_ I see.'
So there was a pause; and then she said, without, however, removing her
eyes from the miniature, 'You are, I believe, Mr. De Cresseron, a very
old friend of Mr. Wylder's. Is it not so?'
So soon after my little escapade, I did not like the question; but it was
answered. There was not the faintest trace of a satirical meaning,
however, in her face; and after another very considerable interval, at
the end of which she shut the miniature in its case, she said, 'It was a
peculiar face, and very beautiful. It is odd how many of our family
married for love--wild love-matches. My poor mother was the last. I could
point you out many pictures, and tell you stories--my cousin, Rachel,
knows them all. You know Rachel Lake?'
'I've not the honour of knowing Miss Lake. I had not an opportunity of
making her acquaintance yesterday; but I know her brother--so does
Wylder.'
'What's that?' said Mark, who had just come in, and was tumbling over a
volume of 'Punch' at the window.
'I was telling Miss Brandon that we both know Stanley Lake.' On hearing
which, Wylder seemed to discover something uncommonly interesting or
clever in the illustration before him; for he approached his face very
near to it, in a scrutinising way, and only said, 'Oh?'
'That marrying for love was a fatality in our family,' she continued in
the same low tone--too faint I think to reach Mark. 'They were all the
most beautiful who sacrificed themselves so--they were all unhappy
marriages. So the beauty of our family never availed it, any more than
its talents and its courage; for there were clever and witty men, as well
as very brave ones, in it. Meaner houses have grown up into dukedoms;
ours never prospers. I wonder what it is.'
'Many families have disappeared altogether, Miss Brandon. It is no small
thing, through so many centuries, to have retained your ancestral
estates, and your pre-eminent position, and even this splendid residence
of so many generations of your lineage.'
I thought that Miss Brandon, having broken the ice, was henceforth to be
a conversable young lady. But this sudden expansion was not to last. Ovid
tells us, in his 'Fasti,' how statues sometimes surprised people by
speaking more frankly and to the purpose even than Miss Brandon, and
straight were cold chiselled marble again; and so it was with that proud,
cold _chef d'oeuvre_ of tinted statuary.
Yet I thought I could, even in that dim glimpse, discern how the silent
subterranean current of her thoughts was flowing; like other
representatives of a dynasty, she had studied the history of her race to
profit by its errors and misfortunes. There was to be no weakness or
passion in her reign.
The princess by this time was seated on the ottoman, and chose to read a
letter, thus intimating, I suppose, that my audience was at an end; so I
took up a book, put it down, and then went and looked over Wylder's
shoulder, and made my criticisms--not very novel, I fear--upon the pages
he turned over; and I am sorry to say I don't think he heard much of what
I was saying, for he suddenly came out with--
'And where is Stanley Lake now, do you know?'
'I saw him in town--only for a moment though--about a fortnight ago; he
was arranging, he said, about selling out.'
'Oh! retiring; and what does he propose doing then?' asked Wylder,
without raising his eyes from his book. He spoke in a sort of undertone,
like a man who does not want to be overheard, and the room was quite
large enough to make that sort of secrecy easy without the appearance of
seeking it.
'I have not an idea. I don't think he's fit for many things. He knows
something of horses, I believe, and something of play.'
'But he'll hardly make out a living that way,' said Wylder, with a sort
of sneer or laugh. I thought he seemed put out, and a little flushed.
'I fancy he has enough to live upon, without adding to it, however,' I
said.
Wylder leaned back in his low chair, with his hands stuffed in his
pockets, and the air of a man trying to look unconcerned, but both
annoyed and disconcerted nevertheless.
I tell you what, Charlie, between you and me, that fellow, Stanley, is a
d----d bad lot. I may be mistaken, of course; he's always been very civil
to me, but we don't like one another; and I don't think I ever heard him
say a good word of any one, I dare say he abuses you and me, as he does
everyone else.'
'Does he?' I said. 'I was not aware he had that failing.'
'Oh, yes. He does not stick at trifles, Master Stanley. He's about the
greatest liar, I think, I ever met with,' and he laughed angrily.
I happened at that moment to raise my eyes, and I saw Dorcas's face
reflected in the mirror; her back was towards us, and she held the letter
in her hand as if reading it, but her large eyes were looking over it,
and on us, in the glass, with a gaze of strange curiosity. Our glances
met in the mirror; but hers remained serenely undisturbed, and mine
dropped and turned away hastily. I wonder whether she heard us. I do not
know. Some people are miraculously sharp of hearing.
'I dare say,' said Wylder, with a sneer, 'he was asking affectionately
for me, eh?'
'No; not that I recollect--in fact there was not time; but I suppose he
does not like you less for what has happened; you're worth cultivating
now, you know.'
Wylder was leaning on his elbow, with just the tip of his thumb to his
teeth, with a vicious character of biting it, which was peculiar to him
when anything vexed him considerably, and glancing sharply this way and
that--
'You know,' he said, suddenly, 'we are a sort of cousins; his mother was
a Brandon--a second cousin of Dorcas's--no, of her father's--I don't know
exactly how. He's a pushing fellow, one of the coolest hands I know; but
I don't see that I can be of any use to him, or why the devil I should. I
say, old fellow, come out and have a weed, will you?'
I raised my eyes. Miss Brandon had left the room. I don't know that her
presence would have prevented his invitation, for Wylder's wooing was
certainly of the coolest. So forth we sallied, and under the autumnal
foliage, in the cool amber light of the declining evening, we enjoyed our
cheroots; and with them, Wylder his thoughts; and I, the landscape, and
the whistling of the birds; for we waxed Turkish and taciturn over our
tobacco.