ALICE SAVILLE.
Among the passengers who landed at Southampton from the Peninsular and
Oriental _Rosetta_, one warm August afternoon in the year 1858, was a
stout well-to-do Bengali ayah. Her stoutness spoke for itself, her gold
nose-jewel, heavy seed-pearl earrings, massive necklet, bangles, and
toe-rings amply vouched for her monetary ease. She carried on one arm
a thick black-and-red plaid shawl (her own property), and on the other
a pale, fragile, wistful-looking infant, dressed in a short white
embroidered pelisse, white bonnet, and enormous black sash.
This miserable puny little orphan had lived and thriven, and developed
into the beauty and heiress alluded to by Captains Brown and Cox.
* * * * *
All through her early childhood she had been the care, no less than
the idol, of her grand aunt and uncle Saville, an old maid and an
old bachelor, who resided in an imposing but slightly dilapidated
mansion in the centre of a large wild-looking demesne, near some
unpronounceable village in the south of Ireland.
Here, for nearly ten years, little Alice--thanks to a supposed delicate
constitution--was allowed unlimited freedom from lessons, lectures,
punishments, and all the restraints that young people of her years
specially detest. It was true that her fond aunt made a valiant
attempt to “do lessons” with her for one hour daily; but how often was
that hour curtailed in deference to the pleading of a jovial, indulgent
old grand-uncle?
Allowed her own way almost entirely, she brooked no constraint; for she
had a fine spirit, as her relations complacently remarked. Her violent
bursts of passion were passed by unchecked. It was merely the Saville
temper, as much hereditary, and seemingly as much to be proud of, as
her violet eyes and the far-famed Saville nose. Mounted on her chestnut
pony she would accompany her uncle in his rides or scour solus round
the fields, with her long golden hair streaming in the wind, looking
far more like a spirit than an ordinary Christian child.
“Ay, but isn’t she the beautiful fair creature to be born in that black
country?” the servants and retainers would observe to each other, with
mingled admiration and amazement.
At ten years of age Alice Saville could barely read; wrote large
intoxicated-looking round-hand; knew nought of arithmetic, sewing, or
spelling; and was, without doubt, as pretty and complete a little dunce
as could be found in the whole province of Munster.
Nevertheless, she had _some_ accomplishments. She was a wonderful rider
for her years, and could and would ride any colt on the premises; gaily
careering round and round the lawn, and sticking on as if she were part
and parcel of the animal, to the pride and delight of all beholders.
Moreover, she could jabber Irish, and was well versed in all the old
lore, legends, fairy-tales, and superstitions current within the four
adjoining counties.
Alice had ten years of boundless liberty, and at the end of that time
her uncle died, his estate passed to the next heir, and his sister,
finding herself no longer the mistress of a large liberally-kept
establishment, but, on the contrary, an old maid in straitened
circumstances, removed to a small house in the suburbs of Dublin, and
talked of sending her niece to school.
* * * * *
Alarming rumours now began to reach Sir Greville Fairfax. His ward
was an unkempt, uneducated, bare-legged little wretch, running wild
among the bogs of Ireland. What a terrible picture was conjured up
before his mental vision. He became at once alive to a sense of his
responsibilities, and sought the advice of his most immediate matronly
neighbours without a day’s delay.
“She must be sent abroad!” this was the universal opinion, that rather
disappointed her guardian; for, to tell the truth, he had had hopes
of keeping her under his own roof, with a governess to look after her
manners and education. Since his son had gone to Sandhurst the house
seemed remarkably lonely and silent, and he would have liked the child
of his old friend Maurice Saville to have made her home with him. He
had been her guardian now for more than a year, and he had actually
never seen her. But when he had taken the suffrages of his most
intimate lady-friends this hope was quenched.
“She must be sent abroad” was their verdict; nothing else could
possibly counteract that odious Irish accent. Lady Bertram knew of such
a charming establishment where two of her nieces had been for years.
Three miles from the city of Tours, and within sight of the village of
Roche-Corbon, stood an old gray château, almost buried in woods. The
Revolution of ’92 had most effectually dispersed its former owners,
who surely in their wildest flight of imagination never dreamt that
their venerable roof-tree would become one day a boarding-school for
the English “Mees”--“Not a school,” Madame Daverne affirmed, merely a
few young friends, whose education she undertook to superintend for
the consideration of three hundred pounds per annum; and a very good
investment Madame found that old château, and its rickety obsolete
furniture. It is true that she kept _char à banc_ and a pair of fat
white horses for the use of her young friends. How otherwise could
they go to Tours thrice a-week to receive lessons in music, singing,
painting, riding, fencing, and dancing? How otherwise attend the
English church once a-day on Sunday? But Jules and his horses were not
an expensive item--rent and living were cheap; Madame was a manager, a
strict disciplinarian, and a most excellent teacher.
The château at Rougemont was a delightful place to its young English
inmates, entirely different to a great, formal, stiff house at home,
with so many rooms on each floor, all the same size, and nothing
interesting or unusual from garret to cellar. Here in the château, with
its little pepper-castor towers and corkscrew staircases, they were
constantly making some novel discovery, whether of a secret panel, or
a secret stair, a well, a picture, or a grave. It had even been hinted
that an _oubliette_ was somewhere on the premises. Rougemont far more
resembled the Palace of the Sleeping Beauty, with its large kitchen
and hall, long stone passages and spacious courtyard, than the orthodox
establishment for young ladies. It was surrounded by a garden laid out
in terraces, connected by flights of shallow steps, and ornamented
with clipped yew-trees, closely resembling in shape the toy-trees of
the sheepfolds of our youth, and a wonderful and varied collection of
stone, plaster, and even coloured wooden statues, which burst upon the
eye in the most unlooked-for and surprising manner.
Madame Daverne, the English widow of a French _avocat_, was a little,
thin, middle-aged woman, invariably dressed in gray, and never seen
without her spectacles. She wore her still abundant dark hair in plain
bandeaux--a long-exploded fashion--and no cap. Although her domestic
arrangements were managed on a liberal English scale, and she believed
in plenty of cold water, open windows, and _tea_, still she had lived
sufficiently long in the country of her adoption to have imbibed a very
strong prejudice in favour of _surveillance_, especially as regarded
the young friends under her care. No idle chatter about the boys at
the Lycée, of love, of lovers, was ever permitted; novels and romances
were unknown and unread. The great outside world, with its sayings
and doings, was an unexplored region to Madame Daverne’s pupils.
Nevertheless, her six young friends found a good deal of happiness in
each other’s society; they spent a very busy, healthy life--rambles
in the forest, tennis, _la grâce_, and gardening were their usual
amusements, and every Thursday during summer and autumn they made
expeditions to Loches, Blois, Chinonceaux, Plessis les Tours, Amboise,
or other places of, as Madame observed, “well-known historical
interest.”
More than six years had passed since the wild little Irish imp had
arrived at Rougemont; and in those years what a change had come over
her! How marvellously she had improved! Her gusts of passion were
among the things of the past, her goat-like impulses had been subdued,
her craving to ride every horse she met had long been curbed, her
ignorance--who dares to talk of ignorance in connection with Madame
Daverne’s most brilliant and most accomplished pupil?
Few girls take leave of school and schoolfellows with as much regret
as Alice Saville. Rougemont has been her home, and she has no desire
to leave the shelter of its gray walls and venture out into the world
alone among strangers. She loves every stick and stone about the old
place; every feature in the landscape she looks out on is a dear
familiar friend; from the “Lanterne” itself to venerable Marmoutier,
from Marmoutier to the Cathedral, whence comes the _Angelus_, faintly
audible across the waters of the swiftly-rolling, poplar-fringed Loire.
To-morrow Alice is to leave Rougemont for ever. Miss Fane, her
guardian’s aunt, is at this instant in the city of Tours. To-morrow she
comes to fetch her away; and no child at the zenith of her enjoyment
at a children’s party ever heard the terrible words: “Your nurse has
come,” with a chillier thrill of dismay than did Alice when Madame
Daverne announced to her that her future protector was about to remove
her from her care.
Alice and her friends are sitting on some broken stone steps; she in
the middle, of course, for is not this their last evening together?
and are they not all very fond of Alice, and very very sorry that
she is leaving them? They may well be fond of Alice, for she is the
brightest creature that ever lived, and the life and soul of the
little community; a favourite with everyone, from Madame herself down
to an old lame _femme de ménage_ occasionally called in on domestic
emergencies. Who could sing, and dance, and tell ghost-stories like
her? Who dressed up and acted with the inimitable talent of their
fair-haired schoolfellow? Who was as generous, as unselfish, as ready
to help, to give, or to lend, as Alice? Bright and gay, warm-hearted
and clever, all the inmates of Rougemont know that when she departs she
will leave a blank behind her impossible to fill.
Think of the prettiest girl you ever saw, and it may give you some
faint idea of Alice Saville, as she sat on the topmost step but
one, with her hands locked round her knees (an easy if not graceful
attitude), and her eyes gazing down on the valley of the Loire for the
last time. Had your beauty mischievous violet eyes--eyes whose colour
was a mystery to many, owing to their rapid change of expression and
their sweeping black lashes; quantities of golden-brown wavy hair
rippling and curling away from her forehead, a roseleaf complexion, a
purely Grecian profile, and seventeen summers?
* * * * *
The farewells have been said three months ago; many tears were
shed--and dried; and now the curtain rises upon new scenes. Touraine
and its picturesque old châteaux and dim green woods fades away, to
give place to the narrow, sun-scorched, steppy streets of Valetta.
In a cool spacious apartment, overlooking a Moorish courtyard, filled
with orange-trees in green tubs and various semi-tropical plants, Alice
and Miss Fane are sitting reading. The post has just come in, and Miss
Fane is revelling in an abundant supply of letters, which flutter
and rustle in an aggravating manner as the cool sea-breeze steals in
and plays with them, and seems to try to snatch from their recipient
the full enjoyment of their contents. The breeze plays tenderly and
lovingly with Alice Saville’s stray little curls, but she reads on and
takes no notice. Nothing short of a “Levanter” would rouse her from
her study--“Ivanhoe.” The world of fiction has been opened to her at
last! Miss Fane thinks that “there is no harm in the Waverley novels,
with the exception of the ‘Heart of Midlothian;’” _that_ is carefully
put aside; any of the others Alice may read; and Alice is rapidly
devouring them. Her crewel-work lies neglected on the floor; her cup
of tea stands at her elbow untasted; and all her thoughts are entirely
engrossed in the storming of Torquilstone Castle.
Miss Fane and Alice had spent the autumn in visiting Rome, Florence,
and Nice, and were spending a few weeks in Malta before returning
to London, where they were to reside together; and Alice was to
make her _début_ the ensuing season. She found Valetta altogether
delightful. Fresh from her studies, with the history of the Crusades,
and of the Knights of Rhodes and Malta still green in her memory, the
half-mediæval half-oriental aspect of the place fascinated her beyond
measure. Many an hour did she spend in the old Cathedral of St. John,
endeavouring to decipher the tombs with which its numerous chapels
are paved. Her knowledge of French and Italian helped her to find out
the meaning of their Latin inscriptions, and many and various were
the stories she mentally wove about those valiant, war-worn, monkish
soldiers lying beneath her feet. “Exploring” was Alice’s favourite
recreation, as she was not, strictly speaking, “out” as yet; and balls,
dancelettes, and yachting picnics were unknown pleasures. The long
narrow streets, the “Nix Mangiare” stairs, the odd steep ascents, were
an amusing and delightful novelty to her light active feet, but a sore
detested pilgrimage to Miss Fane’s gaunt old bones. The mysterious
little shops that line these queer streets of stairs were another
perennial source of interest, including the sleek cats that sat sentry
in almost every doorway. The Maltese themselves were capital subjects
for sketches or study; whether they lay flat on their backs, basking in
the sun, with their caps pulled over their faces, or lounged in lazy
groups about the corners of picturesque old houses, or drove their
huge betasselled mules up and down the steep stradas, they were ever
and always a fresh novelty to Alice. She little knew that she herself
outrivalled the “fried monks” as one of the “sights of Malta;” or that
she was the object of general interest and admiration, as, escorted
by her austere-looking chaperon, she roamed about, satisfying the
curiosity of youth and the craving of a highly imaginative mind.
Miss Fane had been working steadily through her correspondence. Long
crossed letters, resembling lattice-work, occupied her for the best
part of an hour. At length she came to one in a bold, black, manly
hand, not crossed, not even filling two pages. She knit her brows more
than once as she perused it, then slowly folded it, put it in its
envelope, and fastened a look that a basilisk might have envied, on her
companion.
Glancing up from her novel with a frank fearless countenance, she
encountered Miss Fane’s cold gray eyes critically surveying her, over
the top of her tortoiseshell pince-nez. To describe Miss Fane more
particularly, she was a prim, dignified, elderly lady, seated bolt
upright on the most uncompromising chair in the room. She had well-cut
aristocratic features; a high arrogant-looking nose; rather a spiteful
mouth; iron-gray sausage curls, carefully arranged on either temple,
and surmounted by a sensibly sedate cap. A very handsome brown silk
dress, as stiff as herself, completed her costume.
Not being overburdened with this world’s goods, owing to the failure of
a bank in which most of her fortune had been invested, she had accepted
a very handsome allowance and the post of chaperon to her nephew’s
ward. If she could have had this immense increase to her income
without the ward, so much the better; girls were not to her taste, but
though narrow-minded, frigid, and intensely selfish, she was strictly
conscientious, according to her lights, and was thoroughly prepared to
do her duty by her young companion.
“Alice,” she said, glancing from Alice to the note she held in her
hand, and then back again with an air of hesitation, “I have just heard
from my nephew, your guardian, you know. He expects to leave India
immediately; and if the _Euphrates_ stops here for coaling, he says he
will come and look us up. Would you like to read his letter? Perhaps I
ought not to show it to you; but it will give you some idea of the kind
of young man he is.”
“Thank you,” replied his ward, stretching out a slim ready hand; “if
you really think I _may_, Miss Fane,” she added interrogatively,
whereupon Miss Fane handed her her nephew’s effusion, which ran as
follows:
“Cheetapore.
“MY DEAR AUNT MARY,
“I got your last letter all right. I did not answer it at once as I
had nothing to say, and am no scribe at the best of times. I quite
agree with you, that you had much better take entire charge of Miss
Saville now she has left school; but why not have kept her there
another year or two? Your suggestion is excellent, and you will
make a much more fitting guardian than my unworthy self. I do not
know what on earth I should have done with her if you had not come
to the rescue. I cannot imagine what possessed my father to leave
me, of all people, guardian to a girl. Of course I shall look after
her money affairs, etc., but I hope you will take her off my hands
completely. No doubt she will marry soon, as you say she is pretty,
and if the _parti_ is anything like a decent fellow, and comes up
to the mark in the way of settlements, you may take my consent
for granted--I shall say: ‘Bless you, my children,’ with unmixed
satisfaction. I am bringing you some shawls, curios, etc., to make
amends for my shortcomings as a correspondent. We sail from Bombay on
the twenty-second, and if we coal at Malta I shall look you up. What
in the world took you there? It strikes me you are becoming a regular
‘globetrotter’ in your old age.
“Your affectionate Nephew,
“R. M. FAIRFAX.”
“What a funny letter, or note rather!” exclaimed Alice; “only two sides
of the paper. The Fifth Hussars have a very pretty crest; and what a
good hand he writes! He certainly seems very anxious to get rid of
_me_, does he not, Miss Fane? I am afraid I am a great infliction,” she
added, colouring, “but I will do my best to trouble him as little as
possible.”
“I will make you a much more suitable guardian,” returned Miss Fane
complacently. “I do not know what my brother-in-law could have been
dreaming about when he made his will. Poor man! he naturally thought he
had yet many years to live, and never contemplated your having such
a preposterously young guardian. Reginald cares for nothing beyond
his profession--horses, racing, and men’s society. My brother-in-law
spoiled him as a boy, and allowed him his own way completely, though
I believe he was a good son and very much attached to his father.
Greville was a weak-minded man,” she pursued, shaking her head
reflectively, “governed first by his wife and then by his son. Reginald
has always been his own master, and is headstrong and overbearing to
the last degree.”
“You don’t like him, Miss Fane?” inquired Alice, slightly raising her
eyebrows.
“Ah well!” hesitatingly, “I don’t exactly say that; I have seen so
little of him since he was a boy; and then he was, without exception,
the most troublesome, mischievous, impudent urchin I ever came across;
always in trouble, falling out of trees, or downstairs, or off his
pony, playing practical jokes, fighting the gardener’s big boys, riding
his father’s hunters on the sly. He kept everyone in hot water. I spent
six _months_ at Looton, and added six _years_ to my life,” concluded
Miss Fane, nodding her head with much solemnity.
The truth was, Miss Fane had gone to Looton on a very long visit,
with the intention of remaining permanently as virtual mistress.
Her easy-going brother-in-law would have made no objection, but her
impish nephew immediately saw through her object, and made her life
unbearable. His practical jokes were chiefly at her expense, and the
way in which he teased her beloved poodle was simply intolerable. She
had to give up her intention of remaining, and leave what she had
fully intended to have been a most luxurious home.
This she had never forgotten, nor forgiven; her feelings on the
subject had been stifled, but they smouldered. She never cared for
her nephew--never would; he was far too like his mother--her handsome
stepsister--whom she had detested with all her heart. Nevertheless,
she found it to her advantage to be on apparently good terms with her
liberal and wealthy relative, who had not the remotest idea of the real
feelings his aunt secretly cherished towards him.
* * * * *
About a week later the _Euphrates_ came into Malta, late one evening.
Miss Fane and the Lee-Dormers were dining at the Governor’s; Alice, not
being “out,” had tea _solus_ at home.
Time hung heavily on her hands; her book was stupid, she was not in
the humour for music, and it was too early to go to bed. Opening the
window, she stepped out on the balcony that ran all round the house and
overlooked the courtyard. Here she remained for a long time, her chin
resting on her hand, indulging in a day-dream--“in maiden meditation,
fancy free.” The air was laden with the perfume of twenty different
flowers; but the fragrant orange-trees in their tubs down below
overpowered all.
“How delicious!” said Alice to herself, sniffing the air. “If I am
ever married--which is not very likely--I shall have a wreath of real
orange-blossoms, always supposing I can get them.”
Presently she turned her attention to the stars, and endeavoured to
make out some of the constellations, not very successfully, it must be
confessed. She listened to the distant driving through Valetta.
“Belated sightseers returning to their steamers,” she thought.
Just then a carriage drove rapidly into their quiet street, and seemed
to stop close by.
“It can’t be Miss Fane come home already; they are barely at coffee
yet,” she mentally remarked, as she settled herself for another reverie.
After a while, feeling rather chilly, she pushed open the window and
stepped back into the sitting-room. For a moment the light dazzled her
eyes. That moment past, what was her amazement to find a handsome young
man, in undress cavalry uniform, standing on the rug with his back to
the fire!
The surprise was apparently mutual. However, he at once came forward
and said:
“Miss Saville, I am sure. The servant said my aunt was out, but that
you were at home. As the room was empty, I concluded you had gone to
bed.”
“When did you arrive?” she asked, offering her hand.
“We came in about two hours ago, and are going to coal all night--a
most detestable but necessary performance.”
“Have you been here long?” was her next question, as she seated herself
near the table.
“About twenty minutes. I have been enjoying this English-looking fire
immensely. You must have found it rather chilly in the verandah, I
should say.”
A thought flitted through his mind--“Was there a Romeo to this lovely
Juliet?” He looked down at her with a quick keen glance. No; the idea
was absurd.
“What were you doing out there this cool evening?” he added.
“Nothing,” she replied shyly. She could not bring herself to tell this
brilliant stranger that she had been simply star-gazing.
“A regular bread-and-butter miss,” he thought, as he pulled his
moustache with a leisurely patronising look.
Bread-and-butter or not, she was an extremely pretty girl, and his
ward. The idea tickled him immensely. He put his hand before his mouth
to conceal an involuntary smile.
“Vernon or Harcourt would give a good deal to be in my shoes, I fancy,”
he said to himself, as he took a seat at the opposite side of the table
from his charge.
Alice having mastered her first astonishment, felt that it behoved her
to make some attempt at conversation, and to endeavour to entertain
this unexpected guest, pending Miss Fane’s return. She offered
him refreshments, coffee, etc., which he declined, having dined
previously to coming on shore. With small-talk, Maltese curios, and
the never-failing topic--weather, she managed to while away the time.
At first her voice was very low, as it always was when she was nervous
or embarrassed, but she soon recovered herself, and played the part of
hostess in a manner that astonished the man who, half-an-hour before,
had called her (mentally) “a bread-and-butter miss.” Seven years on the
Continent had given her at least easy polished manners. She had none of
the _gaucherie_ so common to an English girl of her own age, brought up
exclusively at home. It seemed to her that Sir Reginald was _shy!_--he
sat opposite to her playing with a paperknife, and by no means
properly supporting his share of the conversation. Her good-natured
efforts amused him prodigiously. He was sufficiently sharp to see that
she thought him bashful and diffident, whereas he was only lazy; he
preferred to allow ladies, whenever they were good enough to talk to
him, to carry on the most of the conversation, a few monosyllables, and
his eloquent dark eyes, contributing his share. Poor deluded Alice! she
little knew that the apparently diffident young man was the life and
soul of his mess, and that shyness was unknown to him (except by name)
since he had been out of his nurse’s arms.
Conversation presently became somewhat brisker; they exchanged
experiences of Germany and India. They discussed books, horses, and
music, and at the end of an hour Alice felt as if she had known him
for at least a year. Certainly they had made as much progress in
each other’s confidence as if they had gone through a London season
together, when a few brief utterances are gasped between the pauses in
a waltz, or whispered on the stairs, or interrupted by some spoil-sport
in the Row.
As for Reginald, he not only felt completely at home, but, what was
worse, most thoroughly bewitched.
“I’m never going to be so mad as to lose my head about this grown-up
child, am I?” he indignantly asked himself. “I who have hitherto been
invulnerable, as far as the tender passion is concerned. No! not
likely. If I can’t face a pretty girl without immediately feeling
smitten, the sooner I renounce the whole sex the better.”
Whilst he was thinking thus, he was to all appearance immersed in a
series of views of Rome and Florence, and listening to a description of
palaces, churches, and tombs.
There was not the slightest _soupçon_ of a flirtation between this
couple. Sir Reginald talked to his ward as he would to his grandmother,
and there was a look in her clear deep gray eyes that would have
abashed the most thorough-paced male flirt in Christendom--which he
was very far from being--a look half of childish innocence, half of
newly-awakened maiden dignity--
Standing where the rivers meet,
Womanhood and childhood sweet.
Miss Fane duly returned, and accorded her nephew a warm welcome
and a kiss, which he very reluctantly received, for she had also a
_moustache_! She treated him besides to a most _recherché_ little
supper, and at twelve o’clock he took his departure, faithfully
promising to look them out a suitable house in London, and with an
uneasy conviction that he had met his fate.
* * * * *
I need scarcely tell the astute reader that the acquaintance thus
formed shortly ripened into something else: a few dances--a few rides
in the Row--a water-party--the Cup-day at Ascot--finally a moonlight
picnic, and the thing was settled.
Before the end of the season the following announcement appeared in
_The Times_:
“On the 25th inst., at St. George’s, Hanover Square, by the Lord
Bishop of Bermuda, assisted by the Rev. H. Fane, Sir Reginald Mostyn
Fairfax, Bart., Captain Fifth Hussars, of Looton Park, Bordershire,
to Alice Eveleen, only child of the late Major-General Saville.”
Sir Reginald expressed his intention of retiring, much to the disgust
of his brother-officers, who said they thought Fairfax was the last
man who would have married and left them. “You of all people too!
After the way you used to be down on other fellows who fell in love,
or got married--it’s perfectly shameful! You were actually the means
of nipping several very promising affairs in the bud, and now you are
going to get married yourself. What excuse have you to make?” cried an
indignant hussar.
“I say,” replied Sir Reginald complacently, “‘that he jests at
scars who never felt a wound.’ That was my case. Now I’m a reformed
character.”
But when at the drawing-room, the opera, and elsewhere, the Fifth saw
the future Lady Fairfax, even the most hardened bachelor among them
frankly admitted that “Rex,” as they called him, had a very fair excuse.
After their honeymoon the Fairfaxes went down to Looton, where they
were considered the handsomest and happiest couple within three
counties.