CHAYLEIGH.
A bright soft day in the autumn--a day which appealed to all who dwelt
in houses to come forth and taste the last lingering flavour of the
summer in the sweet air--a day so still and peaceful that the sudden
rustle of the leaves, as a few of their number (_ennuyés_ leaves,
tired of life sooner than their fellows) detached themselves, and
came, gently wafted by the imperceptible air, to the ground, made one
look round, as though at an intrusion upon its perfect repose--a day
which appealed to memory, and said, "Am I not like some other day in
your life, on which you have pondered many things in your heart, and
looked far back into the past without the agony of regret, and on into
the future undisturbed by dread--a restful day, when life has seemed
not bad to have, but very, very good to leave?"--a day on which any
settled, stern, inexorable occupation seemed harder, more unbearable
than usual, even to the least reasonable and most moderate idler--a
day on which the house which Margaret Carteret had forsaken looked
particularly beautiful, tranquil, and inviting.
The orderliness of Chayleigh was delightful; it was not formal, not
oppressive; it was eminently tasteful. Inside the house and outside it
order reigned, without tyrannising. The lawn was always swept with
extreme nicety, and the flower-beds, though not pruned down to a
tantalising precision, bore evident signs of artistic care.
The house stood almost in the centre of the small grounds, and long
wide French windows in front, and bow windows in the rear, opened on
smooth grassy terraces, which fell away by gentle inclines towards the
flower-garden in front, and at the back towards a pleasaunce, with
high prim alleys, and bosquets which in the pride of summer were
thickset with roses; and so, to some clumps of noble forest-trees,
behind which, and hidden, was the neat wire-fence which bounded the
small demesne.
On this soft autumnal day, the three bow windows which opened on the
terrace at the back of the house were open, and every now and then the
white curtains faintly fluttered, and the leaves of the creepers which
luxuriously festooned the window-frames gently rustled. Far above the
height of the central window, an aspiring passion-flower, rich in the
stiff, majestic, symbolical blossom, stretched its branches, until
they wreathed the window just above the centre bow, and aided an
impertinent rose to look into the room. They had looked in ever since
the one had blossom and the other leaves, but they had seen nothing
there that lived or moved.
The middle room, above the suite of drawing-rooms--whose rosewood
furniture, whose Ambusson carpets, and whose sparkling girandoles
formed the chief delight and pride of Mrs. Carteret's not particularly
capacious heart--had not been used since Margaret Carteret had left
her home to follow the fortunes of her lover.
That such was the case was not due to any sentiment on Mr. Carteret's
part, or any spite on that of his wife. If the former had happened to
want additional space for any of his drying or "curing" processes, he
would have invaded his daughter's forsaken room without the slightest
hesitation, and, indeed, without recalling the circumstance of her
former occupation, of his own accord; while it was quite safe from
interference on the part of the latter for another and a different
reason.
Mrs. Carteret's rooms were perfectly comfortable and sufficient, and
she never had "staying company." She knew better. She was quite
sufficiently hospitable without inflicting that trouble on herself,
and she had no notion of it. Indeed, she never had any notion of doing
anything which she did not thoroughly like, or of putting up with any
kind of inconvenience for a moment if it were possible to free herself
from it; and she had generally found it very possible. Life had rolled
along wonderfully smoothly, on the whole, for Mrs. Carteret. She
possessed one advantage which does not always fall to the lot of
supremely selfish and heartless people--she had an easy temper.
It is refreshing sometimes to observe how much utterly selfish people,
whose sole object in life is to secure pleasure and to banish pain,
suffer by the infliction upon themselves of their own temper. But Mrs.
Carteret was bucklered against fate, even on that side. She took
excellent and successful care that no one else should annoy her, and
she never annoyed herself. It would have afforded a philosophic
observer, indeed, some congenial occupation of mind to divine from
what possible quarter, save that of severe bodily pain, discomfiture
could reach Mrs. Carteret. She was very well off, perfectly healthy,
wholly indifferent to every existing human being except herself and
her cousin, had everything her own way as regarded both objects of
affection, had got rid of her stepdaughter, and had a very comfortable
settlement "in case anything should happen"--according to the queer
formula adopted in speaking of the only absolute certainty in human
events--to Mr. Carteret.
This seemingly-invulnerable person had no need of Margaret's room
then, and when James Dugdale said to her,
"If you don't want that middle room over the drawing-room for any
particular purpose, I should be glad to have the use of it for
mounting my drawings, and so on; the light is very good," she said at
once,
"O yes; you mean Margaret's room, do you not? I don't want it in the
least. I will have it put to rights for you at once; it is full of all
her trumpery."
No third person listening to the two would ever have discerned that
any matter of feeling, or even embarrassment, had any connection with
the subject under mention, still less that the "Margaret" in question
had so lately left the home of her girlhood on a desperate quest,
which the woman who spoke of her complacently believed to be
desperate.
"Yes, I mean that room," said James Dugdale in a careless tone; "but
pray don't have anything in it touched. I will see to all that myself;
in fact, presuming on your permission, I have put a lot of my things
in there, and the servants would play the deuce if they meddled with
them. I may keep the key, Sibylla, I suppose?"
"Of course," replied Mrs. Carteret; and from that moment she never
gave the matter a thought, and James Dugdale had the key of Margaret's
room, and he did put some sketch-books, some sheets of Bristol board,
and other adjuncts of his favourite pursuit on a table, and thus
formally constituted his possession and his pretext. But he seldom
unlocked the door; he rarely entered the apartment, even at first, and
more and more rarely as time stole on, and all his worst fears and
forebodings about Margaret Hungerford had been realised.
Sometimes, when all the house was quiet, on moonlight nights, his pale
face and bent figure might have been seen, framed in the window,
between the branches of the passion-flower which he had trained. There
he would stand awhile, leaning against the woodwork and gazing into
the sky, in whose vastness, whose distance, whose sameness over all
the world, there is surely some vague comfort for the yearnings of
absence, uncertainty, even hopeless separation, or why is the relief
of it so often, so uniformly sought?
Sometimes, but not often, he wrote in Margaret's room; one letter
which he had written there had exerted a great influence upon her
fate, how great he little knew. All the girl's little possessions were
in the room, just as she had left them.
Tidy housemaids, with accurate ideas of the fitness of things, had
come to and gone away from Chayleigh since the sole daughter of the
house had taken her perilous way, according to her headstrong will,
and had been disturbed, and even mutinous, in their minds concerning
the "middle room." But on the whole they had obeyed orders; and James
Dugdale, who had long ceased to be the "tutor," and was supposed to be
Mrs. Carteret's stepbrother by the servants of late date in the
establishment, enjoyed undisturbed possession of the trumpery
water-colour sketches; the little desk with a sloping top, with
"Souvenir" engraved in flourishes on a mother-o'-pearl heart inserted
over the lock; the embroidery-frame, the bead-worked watch-pocket, and
the little library which occupied two hanging shelves, and chiefly
consisted of the "Beauties" of the poets, and a collection of
"Friendship's Offerings" and "Forget-me-nots."
James Dugdale's thoughts were busy with Margaret Hungerford that sweet
autumn day--more busy with her than usual, more full of apprehension.
The time that had elapsed had not deadened the feelings with which he
regarded the wilful girl, who had scorned his interference, scoffed
at and resented his advice, but been obliged to avail herself of his
aid.
He knew that she had done so, but he knew nothing more. And as he
roamed about the garden, and the terrace, and the pleasaunce, and
rambled away to where the forest-trees stood stately, idly treading
the fallen leaves under his listless feet, so lately in their green
brightness far above his head, he sickened with longing to know more
definitely the fate of the absent girl.
"She hated me then," he said with a sigh, as he turned once more
towards the house; "and she is just the woman to hate me more because
she has found out for herself that I was right."
He little knew how fully, to how far greater an extent than he had
discovered it, Margaret had learned the worthlessness of Godfrey
Hungerford.
As he crossed the garden, a woman-servant came towards him, and asked
him for the key of "the middle room." The request jarred upon him
somehow, and he asked rather sharply what it was wanted for.
"We are getting the cleaning done, sir; master and missus is to be
home on Saturday."
James Dugdale handed the key to the housemaid, and entered the
drawing-room through the open window.
"I may as well write to Haldane," he muttered. "The Canadian mail
leaves tomorrow."
When James Dugdale had written his letter, he went out again; but this
time he took his way to the village, intending to post the packet, and
then pursue his way to a "bit" in the vicinity from which he was
making a water-colour drawing.
As he passed the inn which occupied the place of honour in the hilly
little street, the coach which ran daily from a large town on the
south coast to London was drawn up before the door, and the process of
changing horses was being accomplished to the lively satisfaction of
numerous bystanders, to whom this event, though of daily occurrence,
never ceased to be exciting and interesting.
James Dugdale glanced carelessly at the clustering villagers and the
idlers about the inn-door, of whom a few touched their hats or pulled
their hair in his honour; observed casually that two female figures
were standing in the floor-clothed passage, and that one of the
ostlers was lifting a heavy trunk, of a seafaring exterior, down from
the luggage-laden top of the coach; and then passed on, and forgot all
these ordinary occurrences. He took his way to the scene of his
intended sketch, and was soon busily engaged with his work.
When the autumnal day was drawing to its close, and the growing
keenness of the air began to make itself felt, quickly too, by his
sensitive frame, James Dugdale turned his steps homewards, and, taking
the lower road, without again passing through the village, he skirted
the clumps of forest-trees, and entered the little demesne by a small
gate which led into the pleasaunce.
He had almost reached the grassy terrace, when, glancing upwards, as
was his frequent custom,--it had been his habit in the time gone by,
when Margaret's light figure and girlish face had often met the
upturned glance,--he saw that the window was wide open, and some one
was in the room; saw this with quick impatience, which made him step
back a little, so as to get a clearer view of the intruder, and to
mutter, as he did so,
"Those confounded servants! What can they be doing there up to this
time?"
But, as he murmured the words, James Dugdale started violently, and
then stood in fixed, motionless, incredulous amazement. The window of
the middle room was wide open, and against the woodwork, framed by the
blossoms and foliage of the passion-flower, leaned a slight figure, in
a heavy black dress.
The slender hands were clasped together, and showed white against the
sombre garb; the pale, clear-cut, severe young face, lighted by the
last rays of the quickly-setting autumn sun, looked out upon the
tranquil scene; but on every feature sat the deepest abstraction. The
eyes were heedless of all near objects, fixed apparently upon the
trees in the distance; they took no heed of the figure standing in
rapt astonishment upon the terrace.
Not until James Dugdale uttered her name with a faltering, with an
almost frightened voice, as one might address a spirit, did the face
in the window droop, and the eyes search for the speaker. But then
Margaret Hungerford leaned forward, and said, quite calmly,
"Yes, Mr. Dugdale, it is I."