The mellow Autumn came,
And with it came the promised guest.
There’s not an hour
Of day or dreaming night, but I am with thee;
There’s not a wind but whispers of thy name;
And not a flower that sleeps beneath the moon,
But in its hues or fragrance tells a tale
Of thee.
Thou canst not teach me to forget.
How slight and almost imperceptible a change of position, how small
and almost unintentional a step in advance, will sometimes suddenly
open our eyes to the inevitable tendency of a course of conduct
which we have been, up to that point, pursuing in blind security!
Lady Gayland, acute and clear-sighted as she was for others, was
in her own case often the creature of impulse, acting without
consideration, upon the first generous feeling, and reasoning upon
its collateral bearings when too late to retract.
The carriage had been checked a moment for admission, at the spot
where the lodge leading to Somersby-park was situated, on the great
road. “Ah! _nous voila donc, Miladi_,” exclaimed Angelique to her
mistress, thus breaking the confused reverie in which that lady had
long been indulging.
“_Nous voila donc_, indeed,” thought Lady Gayland, as the iron
gates opened to receive them; “and strange indeed that it should be
so:” and for the first time all those reasons which rendered it so
peculiarly strange, that she should, under such circumstances, be
Castleton’s guest, forced themselves upon her attention the more
irresistibly, that they had been so long suppressed or avoided. True,
the ostensible motives of her visit were plausible enough. Her
early acquaintance with Lucy, and subsequent renewal of it, under
circumstances which had entailed a continuance of that protection
of her, which, in the first instant, she had beneficially extended,
the exclusive confidence which Lucy had reposed in her, the helpless
dependence which she had expressed upon her advice and assistance;
the anxiety with which she clung to her companionship as her best
hope of happiness,--all these would have rendered her presence of the
utmost service to any but the wife of Castleton.
Castleton’s manner to her in London had never been such as
necessarily to excite suspicion that his feelings were not subdued.
The two strongest exceptions to the general discipline of his
deportment have been given--the one, their first meeting at Lady
Delacour’s ball--the other, his anxious inquiry at the opera after a
certain gentleman whom he had left at Naples. But his usual manner
towards her was calm, apparently unconstrained, and even common-place.
Lady Gayland, as she never occupied herself much with the concerns
of others, was not perfectly aware of the rapidity with which the
heartless and the fickle can sometimes, in the sunshine of society,
force the artificial growth of indifference; yet she had heard
instances, when, without explanation, hands that had last been
pressed to throbbing hearts, had next met in the lifeless contact
of common courtesy, and lips which had last tremblingly faltered
forth a passionate farewell, when next seen had without emotion been
compressed into a cold and simpering greeting.
But though Lady Gayland knew that such things had been--though there
was nothing obtrusively obvious in Castleton’s manner to herself,
to contradict, and every thing in the mere act of his subsequent
marriage to confirm, the idea that he furnished another instance of
the easy forgetfulness of man, yet had she no internal conviction of
that kind by which to regulate her conduct.
To those gifted individuals who unite acute sensibility with keen
observation, and have ever brought those rarely united powers of
the mind and heart to bear upon the conduct and character of a
beloved object, there are open many hidden sources utterly unmarked
by the million, from which the most infallible impressions are
derived. It may be the accent of a casual word, dropped in common
conversation, or the character of a stolen glance, darted through
mingling crowds; which in spite of intervening years, and altered
circumstances--opportunities apparently neglected, and other
engagements since contracted, in defiance of all probability, and
in opposition to almost undeniable evidence,--will vibrate to the
inmost recesses of the heart, the certain consciousness that all is
not forgotten. And such a consciousness had Lady Gayland sometimes,
in spite of herself, felt that Castleton had not even yet become
indifferent to her. All the scattered indications from which she
collected this conviction, and which she had hitherto as much as
possible driven from her mind, now presented themselves one after
another to her recollection, as her carriage whirled rapidly towards
the front of the house.
“And why, then, am I here?” she asked herself, now the question came
too late. Half the debates in the secret conclave of the human mind
are conducted after the question has been put and carried; and reason
often returns after the event, in company with repentance, instead of
sticking (to speak parliamentarily) to his, proper _pair_, decision.
In this instance, Lady Gayland’s somewhat tardy self-inquiry, “Why
am I here,” was answered by Lucy, who, as the door of the carriage
opened, rushed down the steps to greet her with--
“O how delighted I am to see you! how good it is of you to come, and
even sooner than we expected you!”
Castleton’s reception of Lady Gayland was exactly what might be
expected from a practised man of the world, who had had time, since
seeing her carriage from the window, to prepare for appearing as glad
to see her as became him, without betraying how much more than that
quantum of satisfaction he might feel.
As Lucy, at his desire, conducted Lady Gayland to her own apartment,
she repeated, as she clung fondly to her arm,--
“I’m so very glad you are come; and so, I can assure you, is
Castleton also, though, perhaps, you don’t think he shows it enough;
but he has been rather dull, poring over books morning and evening,
for we have had sad wet weather: but now you are come, you can talk
to him as he likes, and he will soon be gay again.”
When Lucy was returning, having left Lady Gayland in her own room,
an accident occurred which led to much conversation in one part
of the house, though its effect was not immediately known in the
drawing-room. In passing through the gallery she met Lady Gayland’s
maid, Ma’amselle Angelique, whom she had not seen since their drive
from Hornscliff to Mayton. In the good-natured impulse of the moment,
Lucy, only recollecting that the person before her had once been kind
to her, when she needed kindness, seized her hand with warmth, saying,
“How do you do; I am very glad to see you again.”
At first Angelique drew back confused, thinking there must be some
mistake.
“Pardon, Miladi, ce n’est que moi.--Mon Dieu! mais est il possible!
la petite de _poni chaise_. Ah! milles pardons, miladi, si j’ose un
instant me rappeller de vous.” And with her best curtsey she passed
on, leaving Lucy, with the returning consciousness that she had
betrayed herself in a manner that would not be pleasing to Castleton.
Angelique began at once to touch upon her discovery to her mistress,
but there she found her garrulity more suddenly checked than it
usually was on indifferent subjects. At the same time, as Lady
Gayland knew that, by making a mystery, she would only increase the
desire to communicate, she laid no injunctions of silence upon her
attendant, who, accordingly, as soon as dismissed, went down into
the housekeeper’s room, with--
“De ting if the world the most astonish! Je suis petrifie. I was made
a stone. Je n’en reviens plus--and I never come back from it more.”
This of course led to much further cross-questioning and gossipping,
and Castleton had first the happiness of finding how generally the
story was known, when, some little time afterward, he found fault
with his housekeeper for some deficiency in her duty, she excused
herself under the pretence of having meant to please “my lady.” And
when Castleton rather pettishly replied, that he desired she would
not think of consulting my lady on that sort of subject, he was
punished by her impudently adding,
“To be sure, my Lord, I don’t suppose my Lady is like to know what’s
what.”
When, upon this, he indignantly asked what she meant by such
impertinence, to get herself out of the scrape, the blame was,
naturally enough, laid on Mamselle Angelique, both as a strange
servant and a foreigner, and the whole story thus came out.
During the social intercourse of the succeeding days, the effort
was equally made by Castleton and Lady Gayland, so to conduct the
course of their conversation, that Lucy might be enabled to bear them
company. But it evidently, to all parties, was an effort; and not
always a successful one. Sometimes irresistibly borne along by the
current of old recollections, Castleton and his guest were launched
into the wide sea of imagination--an element into which Lucy was not
fitted to follow them; she, therefore, was soon stranded by the way,
and sat watching them in silent security.
But there was one casual circumstance that contributed to throw Lady
Gayland more exclusively into the society of her former friend.
Whilst they were in the house, of course wherever she was, there
Lucy was likewise. But, as has been before observed, Lady Gayland
was passionately fond of riding: Lucy, on the contrary, never much
used to it, and always timid on horseback, was at present prevented
from attempting to mount, by reasons which are understood in all
families. But Castleton had upon their marriage provided her with a
delightful horse, and this she now pressed Lady Gayland to use. This,
to one who had all her life been an inveterate horse-woman, was too
tempting an offer to be refused, and accompanied by Castleton, she
made the trial of the new horse, which seemed to have been attended
with great success, for from that time their promenades were repeated
daily,--the weather continuing as propitious, as it had been
unfavourable before the arrival of the visitor.
What shall we call that state of sympathy, which, while it seems
too serious to settle into a mere flirtation, is as yet by no means
systematized into a _liaison_? But call it what we may, that is the
peculiar stage, when there is nothing so dangerous as a _tête-a-tête_
on horseback. Whilst every advance is still attended with doubt and
incertitude, the attempt is encouraged by apparent facilities of
retreat; in a room, the moment, which must come sooner or later,
when the door will have to be opened and closed behind one of the
parties, is always a matter of dread, and in anticipation, checks
many a hasty move; but here there is no such awkward epoch to come.
All is every instant changing around. An affected stumble on the part
of the horse, may conceal a real false step of his rider; and an ill
received hint, may be obliterated in a canter.
But to speak seriously, there is something in a _tête-a-tête_ ride
through a fine country, which, when a predisposition to confidence
between man and woman has existed, considerably tends to ripen it.
As to Castleton and his guest, their relative situation was such,
as to leave them nothing to confide. They had neither of them any
designs to advance, but if they could not thus avail themselves of
the advantages of the present, it was unfortunate that they should
have so apt an occasion to regret the past, for it was thus they
had wandered in other days, beneath southern skies, with brighter
prospects, and with better hopes.