THE ROYAL OAK.
Three people were sitting in Lady May Penrose's drawing-room, in Chester
Terrace, the windows of which, as all her ladyship's friends are aware,
command one of the parks. They were looking westward, where the sky was
all a-glow with the fantastic gold and crimson of sunset. It is quite a
mistake to fancy that sunset, even in the heart of London--which this
hardly could be termed--has no rural melancholy and poetic fascination
in it. Should that hour by any accident overtake you, in the very centre
of the city, looking, say, from an upper window, or any other elevation
toward the western sky beyond stacks of chimneys, roofs, and steeples,
even through the smoke of London, you will feel the melancholy and
poetry of sunset, in spite of your surroundings.
A little silence had stolen over the party; and young Vivian Darnley,
who stole a glance now and then at beautiful Alice Arden, whose large,
dark, grey eyes were gazing listlessly towards the splendid mists, that
were piled in the west, broke the silence by a remark that, without
being very wise, or very new, was yet, he hoped, quite in accord with
the looks of the girl, who seemed for a moment saddened.
"I wonder why it is that sunset, which is so beautiful, makes us all
sad!"
"It never made me sad," said good Lady May Penrose, comfortably. "There
is, I think, something very pleasant in a good sunset; there _must_ be,
for all the little birds begin to sing in it--it must be cheerful. Don't
you think so, Alice?"
Alice was, perhaps, thinking of something quite different, for rather
listlessly, and without a change of features, she said, "Oh, yes, very."
"So, Mr. Darnley, you may sing, 'Oh, leave me to my sorrow!' for we
won't mope with you about the sky. It is a very odd taste, that for
being dolorous and miserable. I don't understand it--I never could."
Thus rebuked by Lady Penrose, and deserted by Alice, Darnley laughed and
said--
"Well, I do seem rather to have put my foot in it--but I did not mean
miserable, you know; I meant only that kind of thing that one feels when
reading a bit of really good poetry--and most people do not think it a
rather pleasant feeling."
"Don't mind that moping creature, Alice; let us talk about something we
can all understand. I heard a bit of news to-day--perhaps, Mr. Darnley,
you can throw a light upon it. You are a distant relation, I think, of
Mr. David Arden."
"Some very remote cousinship, of which I am very proud," answered the
young man gaily, with a glance at Alice.
"And what is that--what about uncle David?" inquired the young lady,
with animation.
"I heard it from my banker to-day. Your uncle, you know, dear, despises
us and our doings, and lives, I understand, very quietly; I mean, he has
chosen to live quite out of the world, so we have no chance of hearing
anything except by accident, from people we are likely to know. Do you
see much of your uncle, my dear?"
"Not a great deal; but I am very fond of him--he is such a good man, or
at least, what is better," she laughed, "he has always been so very kind
to me."
"You know him, Mr. Darnley?" inquired Lady May.
"By Jove, I do!"
"And like him?"
"No one on earth has better reason to like him," answered the young man
warmly--"he has been my best friend on earth."
"It is pleasant to know two people who are not ashamed to be grateful,"
said fat Lady May, with a smile.
The young lady returned her smile very kindly. I don't think you ever
beheld a prettier creature than Alice Arden. Vivian Darnley had wasted
many a secret hour in sketching that oval face. Those large, soft, grey
eyes, and long dark lashes, how difficult they are to express! And the
brilliant lips! Could art itself paint anything quite like her? Who
could paint those beautiful dimples that made her smiles so soft, or
express the little circlet of pearly teeth whose tips were just
disclosed? Stealthily he was now, for the thousandth time, studying that
bewitching smile again.
"And what is the story about Uncle David?" asked Alice again.
"Well, what will you say--and you, Mr. Darnley, if it should be a story
about a young lady?"
"Do you mean that Uncle David is going to marry? I think it would be an
awful pity!" exclaimed Alice.
"Well, dear, to put you out of pain, I'll tell you at once; I only know
this--that he is going to provide for her somehow, but whether by
adopting her as a child, or taking her for a wife, I can't tell. Only I
never saw any one looking archer than Mr. Brounker did to-day when he
told me; and I fancied from that it could not be so dull a business as
merely making her his daughter."
"And who is the young lady?" asked Alice.
"Did you ever happen to meet anywhere a Miss Grace Maubray?"
"Oh, yes," answered Alice quickly. "She was staying, and her father,
Colonel Maubray, at the Wymerings' last autumn. She's quite lovely, I
think, and very clever--but I don't know--I think she's a little
ill-natured, but very amusing. She seems to have a talent for cutting
people up--and a little of that kind of thing, you know, is very well,
but one does not care for it _always_. And is she really the young
lady?"
"Yes, and---- Dear me! Mr. Darnley, I'm afraid my story has alarmed
you."
"Why should it?" laughed Vivian Darnley, partly to cover, perhaps, a
little confusion.
"I can't tell, I'm sure, but you blushed as much as a man can; and you
know you did. I wonder, Alice, what this under-plot can be, where all is
so romantic. Perhaps, after all, Mr. David Arden is to adopt the young
lady, and some one else, to whom he is also kind, is to marry her. Don't
you think that would be a very natural arrangement?"
Alice laughed, and Darnley laughed; but he was embarrassed.
"And Colonel Maubray, is he still living?" asked Alice.
"Oh, no, dear; he died ten or eleven months ago. A very foolish man, you
know; he wasted a very good property. He was some distant relation,
also; Mr. Brounker said your uncle, Mr. David Arden, was very much
attached to him--they were schoolfellows, and great friends all their
lives."
"I should not wonder," said Alice smiling--and then became silent.
"Do you know the young lady, this fortunate Miss Maubray?" said Lady
May, turning to Vivian Darnley again.
"I? Yes--that is, I can't say more than a mere acquaintance--and not an
old one. I made her acquaintance at Mr. Arden's house. He is her
guardian. I don't know about any other arrangements. I daresay there may
be."
"Well, I know her a little, also," said Lady May. "I thought her
pretty--and she sings a little, and she's clever."
"She's all that," said Alice. "Oh, here comes Dick! What do you say,
Richard--is not Miss Maubray very pretty? We are making a plot to marry
her to Vivian Darnley, and get Uncle David to contribute her _dot_."
"What benevolent people! _You_ don't object, I dare say, Vivian."
"I have not been consulted," said he; "and, of course, Uncle David need
not be consulted, as he has simply to transfer the proper quantity of
stock."
Richard Arden had drawn near Lady May, and said a few words in a low
tone, which seemed not unwelcome to her.
"I saw Longcluse this morning. He has not been here, has he?" he added,
as a little silence threatened the conversation.
"No, he has not turned up. And what a charming person he is!" exclaimed
Lady May.
"I quite agree with you, Lady May," said Arden. "He is, take him on
every subject, I think, about the cleverest fellow I ever met--art,
literature, games, _chess_, which I take to be a subject by itself. He
is very great at chess--for an amateur, I mean--and when I was
chess-mad, nearly a year ago and beginning to grow conceited, he opened
my eyes, I can tell you; and Airly says he is the best musical critic in
England, and can tell you at any hour who is who in the opera, all over
Europe; and he really understands, what so few of us here know anything
about, foreign politics, and all the people and their stories and
scandals he has at his fingers' ends. And he is such good company, when
he chooses, and such a gentleman always!"
"He is very agreeable and amusing when he takes the trouble; I always
like to listen when Mr. Longcluse talks," said Alice Arden, to the
secret satisfaction of her brother, whose enthusiasm was, I think,
directed a good deal to her--and to, perhaps, the vexation of other
people, whom she did not care at that moment to please.
"An Admirable Crichton!" murmured Vivian Darnley, with a rather
hackneyed sneer. "Do you like his style of--_beauty_, I suppose I should
call it? It has the merit of being very uncommon, at least, don't you
think?"
"Beauty, I think, matters very little. He has no beauty, but his face
has what, in a man, I think a great deal better--I mean refinement, and
cleverness, and a kind of satire that rather interests one," said Miss
Arden, with animation.
Sir Walter Scott, in his "Rob Roy"--thinking, no doubt, of the Diana
Vernon of his early days, the then beautiful lady, long afterwards
celebrated by Basil Hall as the old Countess Purgstorf (if I rightly
remember the title), and recurring to some cherished incident, and the
thrill of a pride that had ceased to agitate, but was at once pleasant
and melancholy to remember--wrote these words: "She proceeded to read
the first stanza, which was nearly to the following purpose. [Then
follow the verses.] 'There is a great deal of it,' said she, glancing
along the paper, and interrupting the sweetest sounds that mortal ears
can drink in--those of a youthful poet's verses, namely, read by the
lips which are dearest to them." So writes Walter Scott. On the other
hand, in certain states, is there a pain intenser than that of listening
to the praises of another man from the lips we love?
"Well," said Darnley, "as you say so, I suppose there is all that,
though I can't see it. Of course, if he tries to make himself agreeable
(which he never does to me), it makes a difference, it affects
everything--it affects even his looks. But I should not have thought him
good-looking. On the contrary, he appears to me about as ugly a fellow
as one could see in a day."
"He's not that," said Alice. "No one could be ugly with so much
animation and so much expression."
"You take up the cudgels very prettily, my dear, for Mr. Longcluse,"
said Lady May. "I'm sure he ought to be extremely obliged to you."
"So he would be," said Richard Arden. "It would upset him for a week, I
have no doubt."
There are few things harder to interpret than a blush. At these words
the beautiful face of Alice Arden flushed, first with a faint, and then,
as will happen, with a brighter crimson. If Lady May had seen it, she
would have laughed, probably, and told her how much it became her. But
she was, at that moment, going to her chair in the window, and Richard
Arden would, of course, accompany her. He did see it, as distinctly as
he saw the glow in the sky over the park trees. But, knowing what a
slight matter will sometimes make a recoil, and even found an antipathy,
he wisely chose to see it not--and chatting gaily, followed Lady May to
the window.
But Vivian Darnley, though he said nothing, saw that blush, of which
Alice, with a sort of haughty defiance, was conscious. It did not make
him like or admire Mr. Longcluse more.
"Well, I suppose he is very charming--I don't know him well enough
myself to give an opinion. But he makes his acquaintances rather oddly,
doesn't he? I don't think any one will dispute that."
"I don't know really. Lady May introduced him to me, and she seems to
like him very much. So far as I can see, people are very well pleased at
knowing him, and don't trouble their heads as to how it came about,"
said Miss Arden.
"No, of course; but people not fortunate enough to come within the
influence of his fascination, can't help observing. How did he come to
know your brother, for instance? Did any one introduce him? Nothing of
the kind. Richard's horse was hurt or lame at one of the hunts in
Warwickshire, and he lent him a horse, and introduced himself, and they
dined together that evening on the way back, and so the thing was done."
"Can there be a better introduction than a kindness?" asked Alice.
"Yes, where it _is_ a kindness, I agree; but no one has a right to push
his services upon a stranger who does not ask for them."
"I really can't see. Richard need not have taken his horse if he had not
liked," she answered.
"And Lady May, who thinks him such a paragon, knows no more about him
than any one else. She had her footman behind her--didn't she tell you
all about it?"
"I really don't recollect; but does it very much matter?"
"I think it does--that is, it has been a sort of system. He just gave
her his arm over a crossing, where she had taken fright, and then
pretended to think her a great deal more frightened than she really can
have been, and made her sit down to recover in a confectioner's shop,
and so saw her home, and _that_ affair was concluded. I don't say, of
course, that he is never introduced in the regular way; but a year or
two ago, when he was beginning, he always made his approaches by means
of that kind of stratagem; and the fact is, no one knows anything on
earth about him; he has emerged, like a figure in a phantasmagoria, from
total darkness, and may lose himself in darkness again at any moment."
"I am interested in that man, whoever he is; his entrance, and his
probable exit, so nearly resemble mine," said a clear, deep-toned voice
close to them; and looking up, Miss Arden saw the pale face and peculiar
smile of Mr. Longcluse in the fading twilight.
Mr. Longcluse was greeted by Lady May and by Richard Arden, and then
again he drew near Alice, and said, "Do you recollect, Miss Arden, about
ten days ago I told you a story that seemed to interest you--the story
of a young and eloquent friar, who died of love in his cell in an abbey
in the Tyrol, and whose ghost used to be seen pensively leaning on the
pulpit from which he used to preach, too much thinking of the one
beautiful face among his audience, which had enthralled him. I had left
the enamel portrait I told you of at an artist's in Paris, and I wrote
for it, thinking you might wish to see it--hoping you might care to see
it," he added, in a lower tone, observing that Vivian Darnley, who was
not in a happy temper, had, with a sudden impulse of disdain, removed
himself to another window, there to contemplate the muster of the stars
in the darkening sky, at his leisure.
"That was so kind of you, Mr. Longcluse! You have had a great deal of
trouble. It _is_ such an interesting story!" said Alice.
In his reception, Mr. Longcluse found something that pleased, almost
elated him. Had Richard Arden been speaking to her on the subject of
their morning's conversation? He thought not, Lady May had mentioned
that he had not been with them till just twenty minutes ago, and Arden
had told him that he had dined with his uncle David and Mr. Blount, upon
the same business on which he had been occupied with both nearly all
day. No, he could not have spoken to her. The slight change which made
him so tumultuously proud and happy, was entirely spontaneous.
"So it seemed to me--an eccentric and interesting story--but pray do not
wound me by speaking of trouble. I only wish you knew half the pleasure
it has been to me to get it to show you. May I hold the lamp near for a
moment while you look at it?" he said, indicating a tiny lamp which
stood on a pier-table, showing a solitary gleam, like a lighthouse,
through the gloom; "you could not possibly see it in this faint
twilight."
The lady assented. Had Mr. Longcluse ever felt happier?