BREACH BETWEEN UNCLE AND NIECE.
A few days later the tranquillity of Darrell Court was at an end. The
invited guests were expected, and Sir Oswald had determined to do them
all honor. The state-apartments, which had not been used during his
tenure, were all thrown open; the superb ball-room, once the pride of
the county, was redecorated; the long, empty corridors and suites of
apartments reserved for visitors, were once more full of life. Miss
Hastings was the presiding genius; Pauline Darrell took far less
interest in the preparations.
"I am glad," she said, one morning, "that I am to see your 'world,' Sir
Oswald. You despise mine; I shall be anxious to see what yours is like."
The baronet answered her testily:
"I do not quite understand your remarks about 'worlds.' Surely we live
under the same conditions."
"Not in the same world of people," she opposed; "and I am anxious to see
what yours is like."
"What do you expect to find in what you are pleased to call my world,
Pauline?" he asked, angrily.
"Little truth, and plenty of affectation; little honor, and plenty of
polish; little honesty, and very high-sounding words; little sincerity,
and plenty of deceit."
"By what right do you sit in judgment?" he demanded.
"None at all," replied Pauline; "but as people are always speaking ill
of the dear, honest world in which I have lived, I may surely be
permitted to criticise the world that is outside it."
Sir Oswald turned away angrily; and Miss Hastings sighed over the girl's
willfulness.
"Why do you talk to Sir Oswald in a fashion that always irritates him?"
she remonstrated.
"We live in a free country, and have each of us freedom of speech."
"I am afraid the day will come when you will pay a sad price for yours."
But Pauline Darrell only laughed. Such fears never affected her; she
would sooner have expected to see the heavens fall at her feet than that
Sir Oswald should not leave Darrell Court to her--his niece, a Darrell,
with the Darrell face and the Darrell figure, the true, proud features
of the race. He would never dare to do otherwise, she thought, and she
would not condescend to change either her thought or speech to please
him.
"The Darrells do not know fear," she would say; "there never yet was an
example of a Darrell being frightened into anything."
So the breach between the uncle and the niece grew wider every day. He
could not understand her; the grand, untrained, undisciplined, poetical
nature was beyond him--he could neither reach its heights nor fathom its
depths. There were times when he thought that, despite her outward
coldness and pride, there was within a soul of fire, when he dimly
understood the magnificence of the character he could not read, when he
suspected there might be some souls that could not be narrowed or forced
into a common groove. Nevertheless he feared her; he was afraid to
trust, not the honor, but the fame of his race to her.
"She is capable of anything," he would repeat to himself again and
again. "She would fling the Darrell revenues to the wind; she would
transform Darrell Court into one huge observatory, if astronomy pleased
her--into one huge laboratory, if she gave herself to chemistry. One
thing is perfectly clear to me--she can never be my heiress until she is
safely married."
And, after great deliberation--after listening to all his heart's
pleading in favor of her grace, her beauty, her royal generosity of
character, the claim of her name and her truth--he came to the decision
that if she would marry Captain Langton, whom he loved perhaps better
than any one else in the world, he would at once make his will, adopt
her, and leave her heiress of all that he had in the world.
One morning the captain confided in him, telling him how dearly he loved
his beautiful niece, and then Sir Oswald revealed his intentions.
"You understand, Aubrey," he said--"the girl is magnificently
beautiful--she is a true Darrell; but I am frightened about her. She is
not like other girls; she is wanting in tact, in knowledge of the world,
and both are essential. I hope you will win her. I shall die content if
I leave Darrell Court in your hands, and if you are her husband. I could
not pass her over to make you my heir; but if you can persuade her to
marry you, you can take the name of Darrell, and you can guide and
direct her. What do you say, Aubrey?"
"What do I say?" stammered the captain. "I say this--that I love her so
dearly that I would marry her if she had not a farthing. I love her so
that language cannot express the depth of my affection for her."
The captain was for a few minutes quite overcome--he had been so long
dunned for money, so hardly pressed, so desperate, that the chance of
twenty thousand a year and Darrell Court was almost too much for him.
His brow grew damp, and his lips pale. All this might be his own if he
could but win the consent of this girl. Yet he feared her; the proud,
noble face, the grand, dark eyes rose before him, and seemed to rebuke
him for his presumptuous hope. How was he to win her? Flattery, sweet,
soft words would never do it. One scornful look from her sent his ideas
"flying right and left."
"If she were only like other girls," he thought, "I could make her my
wife in a few weeks."
Then he took heart of grace. Had he not been celebrated for his good
fortune among the fair sex? Had he not always found his handsome
person, his low, tender voice, his pleasing manner irresistible? Who was
this proud, dark-eyed girl that she should measure the depths of his
heart and soul, and find them wanting? Surely he must be superior to the
artists in shabby coats by whom she had been surrounded. And yet he
feared as much as he hoped.
"She has such a way of making me feel small," he said to himself; "and
if that kind of feeling comes over me when I am making her an offer, it
will be of no use to plead my suit."
But what a prospect--master of Darrell Court and twenty thousand per
annum! He would endure almost any humiliation to obtain that position.
"She must have me," he said to himself--"she shall have me! I will force
her to be my wife!"
Why, if he could but announce his engagement to Miss Darrell, he could
borrow as much money as would clear off all his liabilities! And how
much he needed money no one knew better than himself. He had paid this
visit to the Court because there were two writs out against him in
London, and, unless he could come to some settlement of them, he knew
what awaited him.
And all--fortune, happiness, wealth, freedom, prosperity--depended on
one word from the proud lips that had hardly ever spoken kindly to him.
He loved her, too--loved her with a fierce, desperate love that at times
frightened himself.
"I should like you," said Sir Oswald, at the conclusion of their
interview, "to have the matter settled as soon as you can; because, I
tell you, frankly, if my niece does not consent to marry you, I shall
marry myself. All my friends are eagerly solicitous for me to do so;
they do not like the prospect of seeing a grand old inheritance like
this fall into the hands of a willful, capricious girl. But I tell you
in confidence, Aubrey, I do not wish to marry. I am a confirmed old
bachelor now, and it would be a sad trouble to me to have my life
changed by marriage. Still I would rather marry than that harm should
come to Darrell Court."
"Certainly," agreed the captain.
"I do not mind telling you still further that I have seen a lady whom,
if I marry at all, I should like to make my wife--in fact, she resembles
some one I used to know long years ago. I have every reason to believe
she is much admired and sought after; so that I want you to settle your
affairs as speedily as possible. Mind, Aubrey, they must be
settled--there must be no deferring, no putting off; you must have an
answer--yes or no--very shortly; and you must not lose an hour in
communicating that answer to me."
"I hope it will be a favorable one," said Aubrey Langton; but his mind
misgave him. He had an idea that the girl had found him wanting; he
could not forget her first frank declaration that she did not like him.
"If she refuses me, have I your permission to tell Miss Darrell the
alternative?" he asked of Sir Oswald.
The baronet thought deeply for some minutes, and then said:
"Yes; it is only fair and just that she should know it--that she should
learn that if she refuses you she loses all chance of being my heiress.
But do not say anything of the lady I have mentioned."
The visitors were coming on Tuesday, and Thursday was the day settled
for the ball.
"All girls like balls," thought Captain Langton. "Pauline is sure to be
in a good temper then, and I will ask her on Thursday night."
But he owned to himself that he would rather a thousand times have faced
a whole battalion of enemies than ask Pauline Darrell to be his wife.