CHAPTER XI.
AT NASEDALE.
Mr. Horatio Mountjoy, the Anglo-Indian judge for whom Mrs. MacClaverhouse had made her little dinner, had been one of the departed general's most intimate friends, and having now returned to England to pass the rest of his days in peaceful retirement, was anxious to show all possible kindness to the general's widow.
He had bought an estate in Surrey since his return,—a charming old mansion of the Queen Anne period, with prim gardens of the Dutch school, a noble park, and a home-farm large enough to admit all the experiments of an amateur agriculturist, but not so extensive as to swamp the experimentalist's fortune. It was to this pleasant retreat that Mr. Mountjoy invited his old friend's widow and her niece.
"We are to have a very nice party," wrote the judge's wife; "and Horatio begs me to tell you that we shall expect you and dear Lady Cecil to stay till Christmas—even if our other friends grow tired of us, and run away before then. I thought your niece was looking pale and ill; but the breezes from the Surrey hills will set her up for next season."
"Now that's what I call hospitality!" exclaimed Mrs. MacClaverhouse; "but Mr. Mountjoy always was so magnificent in his way of doing things. 'That man has a regal mind,' I used to say to my husband, after one of the Mountjoys' Calcutta dinner-parties. And she's a good warm-hearted soul, though there's not much in her. There's nothing pays so well as a long visit, Cecil; and if the Mountjoys press us to stay till Christmas, I shall stay; for skipping about from one house to another eats into so much money in the way of travelling-expenses and servants' fees, that you might almost as well stop at home."
Cecil could only acquiesce in her aunt's arrangement. What was she but the handmaiden of her kindly protectress, bound to go wherever the lively dowager chose to take her, and to be pleased and merry at the will of others? She was very tired of her life. Driving through pleasant suburbs in the phantom chariot, she looked with sad yearning eyes at tiny cottages, enshrined in tiny gardens, and thought how simple and placid existence might be in such modest habitations.
"What happiness to be one's own mistress!" she thought, "never to be obliged to smile when one is sad, or talk and laugh for the pleasure of other people. If my poor father had left me a hundred a-year I might have lived in such a cottage, with my books and piano, and a few birds and flowers. I might have been good to the poor, even; for it is so easy for poor people to help one another. I envy the dowdiest old maid who ever eked out her tiny income. I envy any one and every one who can live their own lives."
But after indulging in such thoughts as these Cecil felt ashamed of the ingratitude involved in her mute repinings. Was not her kinswoman good and affectionate after her own sharp fashion? and was it not the dependant's duty to be pleased and satisfied with the home that sheltered her? Even if there was some sacrifice of freedom demanded from her, Cecil could have made that sacrifice without complaining, if the dowager would only have let her alone. But to refrain from interference with the business of other people was just one of those things which Mrs. MacClaverhouse could not do. She had set her heart upon her niece making a good marriage, and to that end she kept watch upon every eligible bachelor who came within her ken.
It was in vain that Cecil protested against any thing like matrimonial scheming in her behalf. The dowager did not hesitate to remind her of the dull dead level of poverty that lay before her in the future.
"Do you happen to remember that my pension dies with me Lady Cecil," she demanded angrily, "and that I have only a wretched pittance and a collection of obsolete Indian trumpery to leave you? So long as I live you will be able to keep afloat somehow in society; but I should like to know what will become of you when I am gone? You turn up your nose at my managing ways; but it is only by management that I have contrived to keep my head above water, and have my own carriage to ride in, and my own maid to travel with me. As for you, you are no more of a manager than one of those Indian idols; and a landlady who wouldn't dare to take half a glass of wine out of the cellaret or a spoonful of tea out of the caddy while I am alive, would pilfer you out of house and home before I'd been in my grave a month. It's all very well to talk about not wishing to marry, and being happy alone with your books and piano, and so forth; but you're not the stuff old maids are made of, Lady Cecil. The girls of the present day are not brought up to make old maids. They are like the houses that the cheap builders run up, that are made to sell, and not to last. The girls of the present day are delightful creatures, but they are brought up to marry rich men and live in fine houses, and be imposed upon by their servants. I pity the children of the rising generation, for they will have no maiden aunts to spoil them."
Mrs. MacClaverhouse had been shrewd enough to perceive the impression made on Mr. O'Boyneville by her niece's attractions. She knew that the barrister was rich—and, indeed, had sounded Mr. Crawford as to his probable income, which was of course exaggerated by the painter, who accepted the popular report of the lawyer's gains without that grain of salt with which all such reports should be taken. On questioning Cecil very closely respecting Mr. O'Boyneville's call, the dowager had speedily perceived that something special had distinguished it from common visits.
"He asked my permission to call," said Mrs. MacClaverhouse; "and he said quite enough to convince me that he had fallen over head and ears in love with you. It's my opinion he came to make you an offer of marriage; and that's why I kept out of the way. But, bless my heart and soul! I needn't have taken the trouble—for of course you refused him; though I am told his income is little short of four thousand a-year. You are bent upon dying a homeless pauper, and all I hope is that they'll have improved the casual wards of the unions before your time."
Cecil tried to parry Mrs. MacClaverhouse's attack, but the elder lady was past mistress of the polite art of conversational fencing, and she did not abandon the assault until her niece had unwillingly confessed the secret of Mr. O'Boyneville's visit.
"And you refused him!" shrieked the indignant dowager. "That's what I call flying in the face of Providence. This is the second chance you've had within two years, Lady Cecil Chudleigh, and I hope I may live to wish you joy of the third; but I freely confess I don't expect to do so."
This sort of expostulation is by no means pleasant to hear, and poor Cecil had to listen patiently to much harping on the same string. She was familiar with every variation which such a theme can undergo in the hands of a skilful composer,—the minor wailings and lamentations, the brilliant crescendos of feminine mockery, the bass grumblings and sharp forte passages of anger, the peevish rallentandos and diminuendos. The unhappy girl bore it all, but she suffered acutely.
The change to Nasedale did not set her free from her aunt's lectures; for considerate Mrs. Mountjoy allotted two charming bed-rooms, with a pretty sitting-room between them, to the two ladies; and here, on rainy days, Cecil enjoyed a great deal of her aunt's society.
"I don't want to detain you here if you'd rather be in the billiard-room, or making yourself sticky with décalcomanie amongst those frivolous girls in the drawing-room. What regiments of girls there are in the world! and what in goodness' name is to become of them all, I wonder!" exclaimed the dowager, parenthetically. "As to the men the Mountjoys have collected, I never saw so many married fogies gathered together in one house; and the way they stuff themselves at luncheon is something dreadful. Tiffin, indeed! I'd tiffin them if they were my visitors. A glass of dry sherry at thirty-five shillings a dozen and a picnic biscuit is all they'd get between breakfast and dinner from me."
But Nasedale was a very pleasant place, in spite of the elderly fogies who over-ate themselves at luncheon, and the frivolous young ladies who devoted themselves to the decoration of cups and saucers that wouldn't bear washing, and dessert plates the painted splendours of which rarely survived the ordeal of preserved ginger or guava jelly.
Hospitality reigned supreme in the comfortable mansion. People did as they liked. The scenery for twenty miles round was superb; and if Mr. Mountjoy was not quite so magnificent as the nabob who ordered "more curricles," the Nasedale stables supplied plenty of horses, and the Nasedale coach-houses contained every variety of modern vehicle for the accommodation of the visitors, from the omnibus which took the servants to church or the ladies to a county ball, to the miniature Croydon basket-chaise and the deliciously stumpy little pony, which the most timid of the décalcomaniacs was scarcely afraid to drive.
After returning from a hurried run up to town, the judge astonished the dowager, and considerably disconcerted Cecil, by exclaiming in the middle of dinner:
"Oh, by-the-bye, Mrs. MacClaverhouse, I met your friend O'Boyneville in Lincoln's Inn to-day, and I asked him if he could run down for a day or two. He seems to be full of business; but when he heard you were down here, he evidently felt inclined to come. Not very flattering to me, you'll say. I told him of our archery-meeting on the twentieth, and he said, 'If it's possible, I'll be down in time for the archery-meeting; but it's about as nearly impossible as any thing human can be.'"
Lady Cecil breathed more freely. She dreaded the appearance of her rejected suitor, and the friendly persecution to which his coming would inevitably expose her. But when the two ladies retired to their room that night, the dowager cried triumphantly:
"If Mr. O'Boyneville is as much in earnest as I think he is, he'll come to the archery-meeting, Cecil; and I do hope, if he renews his offer, you'll be wise enough to accept it."
The archery-meeting of which the judge had spoken was to be a very grand affair, and the young ladies at Nasedale had made their fingers sore and their shoulders weary with the twanging of bows. The meeting was to take place on a noble plateau, at the top of the noblest range of hills in all Surrey; and all the fun of a picnic was to be combined with the excitement of a toxophilite contest.
"We might have had our archery-meeting in the park," said the judge, when he explained to his guests the arrangements he had made for their pleasure; "but to my mind half the fun of these things is in the going and returning. The officers of the 14th are to drive over from Burtonslowe to meet us; and I've invited all sorts of people from town. I won't say any thing about the two prizes I selected at Hunt and Roskell's this morning; but I hope my taste will please the ladies who win them."
Cecil did not affect the twanging of bows, and was content to remain amongst the young ladies who, after vainly endeavouring to hit the bull's-eye, and losing their arrows in distant brushwood, without having so much as grazed the outermost edge of the target, retired from the contest, and declared that there was nothing so very exciting in archery after all, and that croquet was twenty times better. Amongst these milder spirits Cecil beguiled the fine summer afternoons with that gentle tapping of wooden-balls, and liberal display of high-heeled boots, which is the favourite dissipation of modern damsels; and thus, amid quiet pleasures, with a good deal of riding and driving, and novel-reading and billiard-playing, and much good eating and drinking, time glided by at Nasedale until the nineteenth, and as yet there were no signs of the Queen's Counsel.
"If O'Boyneville had meant to be amongst us to-morrow he'd have made his appearance by this time," said the judge in the course of dinner. "He knows we start early to-morrow morning."
"I can't fancy O'Boyneville at a picnic," said a listless young gentleman who was amongst the new arrivals. "I can't fancy him any where except in the law courts. One sometimes meets him at men's dinners, but he never seems to enjoy himself unless he can talk shop, and he looks at the other fellows as if he'd like to cross-examine them."
The usual meanderings on the terrace outside the drawing-room windows, with which the younger members of the Nasedale party were wont to beguile the warm summer evenings, were impossible to-night, for at nine o'clock a violent clap of thunder shook the roofs and chimneys of the old mansion, and pretty little feminine shriekings and screechings fluttered the tranquillity of the party. The young ladies who were not afraid of the lightning made a merit of not being afraid; and the young ladies who were afraid made a merit of being horribly frightened, and shivered and started in the most bewitching manner at sight of every flash. And one young lady who had written a volume of poetry, in which a weak solution of L. E. L. was artfully intermingled with a still weaker solution of Mrs. Browning, stood before a window and exclaimed about the grandeur and sublimity of the spectacle.
Cecil, sitting quietly at work under a reading-lamp, was rather rejoiced when she heard the violent downpour of rain which succeeded the storm.
"Mr. O'Boyneville will scarcely come to-night, at any rate," she thought.
There was a great deal of lamentation about the rain, and considerable discussion as to whether it augured ill or well for the morrow. It was a blessing to get the storm over. But then the grass would be damp, most likely, and so on. The young ladies thought of their delicate boots, their dainty dresses.
"My hat cost two guineas and a half," murmured one damsel to a sympathising confidante. "A ruche of peacock's feathers, you know, dear; and the sweetest mother-of-pearl butterfly, and a tiny, tiny green-chenille bird's-nest, with three gold eggs in it, at the side—and one shower of rain would utterly spoil it."
The rain came thicker and faster. Nothing short of a hurricane would serve to dry the grass after such a storm. But Cecil did not think of the picnic; she only congratulated herself upon the improbability that Mr. O'Boyneville would care to travel in such weather.
"No chance of O'Boyneville," said Mr. Mountjoy, as he stood before the fire which he had ordered to be lighted since the advent of the rain. "I told him to write and announce his coming, so that I might send a vehicle over to the station to meet him. It's a ten-mile drive, you know, and there's very seldom so much as a fly to be had at that miserable little station. However, the last London post is in, and there's no letter from O'Boyneville."
The pattering of the rain against the windows made itself heard in every pause of the conversation, and the noise of the pelting drops grew louder every moment. Cecil was still bending quietly over her work in a cosy corner near the angle of the wide velvet-covered mantelpiece, and the judge's guests had gathered in a circle about the cheery fire, when the bell of the great hall-door rang loudly.
"Who the deuce can that be, at this time of night, and at this time of such a night?" cried Mr. Mountjoy.
"Whoever he is, he is the owner of a tolerably strong arm, and he knows how to make his arrival public," said one of the listless visitors.
The drawing-room opened out of the hall; and in the silence that followed the clamour of the bell, Mr. Mountjoy and his visitors heard the opening of the ponderous door, the rapid accents of a sonorous bass voice asking questions, and a fluttering sound which resembled the noise made by an enormous Newfoundland-dog who shakes himself dry after emerging from the water.
There was a pause of some ten minutes, and then the drawing-room door was thrown open, and the servant announced:
"Mr. O'Boyneville."
"I thought as much," said the dowager in an undertone, which was intended only for the ear of her niece.
The barrister made his appearance, a little damp and weather-stained, in spite of the hurried toilet he had made since entering the house, but with the freshness of the open air upon him, and the aspect of a man whose heart is aglow with triumph. He received the cordial welcome of his host, shook hands with the people he knew, offered a big cold paw to Cecil as coolly as if there had been nothing out of the common in their last parting, showed his white teeth, laughed at nothing particular till every crystal drop in the old-fashioned chandelier shivered and trembled, and, in short, made more noise in five minutes than the rest of the party had made in the whole of the evening.
"Yes, it certainly isn't the nicest weather for travelling," he said, in reply to his host's eager inquiries; but you see I said I'd come if it was possible; and here I am. I was on a committee in Victoria Street at half-past five; took a hansom, and told the man to drive to Brunswick Square like wildfire; packed my portmanteau and put on my dress-coat while the man waited; drove to the Oriental Club, and left my portmanteau with the porter while I dined with the Governor-General of Seringapatam; rose from the table at a quarter before nine, borrowed a railway rug from one of the waiters, and caught the nine-o'clock train at Waterloo; found myself an hour after at a little station where there was one deaf porter, and no vehicle of any description whatever; held considerable difficulty in getting any thing at all out of the deaf porter; but finally extracted the pleasing intelligence that Nasedale was a good ten miles, and that, barring John Cole's own bay mare at the Pig and Whistle, there wasn't an animal of any kind to be had within a mile and a half. Of course, after hearing this, the best thing was to get John Cole's bay mare; and fine work I had with John Cole before he would let me have the beast, which he keeps for his own pleasure and convenience, and which has never been ridden or driven by man or boy except himself since he bought her at Barnet Fair, six years come next October. However, when he saw that I meant to have the animal whether he liked it or not, and when he heard where I was coming, he made a virtue of necessity, and brought her out—and here I am: and I think, my dear Mountjoy, of all the Lanes I ever had the pleasure of beholding, the lanes between this place and the station are the muddiest; and of all the rain that ever reduced the civilised universe to pulp and slop, the rain I came through to-night has been the heaviest."
After this Mr. O'Boyneville took possession of the company, as it was his wont to take possession of any assemblage in which he happened to find himself. He went into society very rarely, and the laws of society had very little restraint for him. He could talk well, and he knew that he could talk well. The necessities of his professional career had obliged him to possess himself of a superficial knowledge of every subject, and some smattering of almost every science. A native audacity did the rest; and a frank bonhomie of manner, a slap-dash mode of expression, which was too original to be vulgar, won the suffrages of people who would have tabooed a smaller man for lesser sins against conventionality than those which were permitted in Mr. O'Boyneville.
He talked well, and like most good talkers, he very often talked nonsense; for the man who weighs his sentences before he utters them, who pauses to consider the force of an argument before he launches it, is rarely a brilliant conversationalist. And sometimes it seems as if the brightest creatures of the brain are those ephemeral and unconsidered trifles which a man utters haphazard in the heat of argument or the abandonment of purposeless small-talk. Posterity values Samuel Johnson rather for the happy sayings of a convivial evening than for the ponderous polysyllables of his most carefully considered compositions.
A silver salver, bearing a monster tankard of mulled claret, was brought into the drawing-room before the assembly dispersed; and in the diversion afforded by the handing about of the wine, Mr. O'Boyneville contrived to seat himself between Cecil and her aunt; and after artfully conciliating the elder lady, he drew his chair near to the little table by which the younger sat absorbed in her work.
"You don't know what difficulty I had to get here to-night, Lady Cecil," he said; "and it was only because you are here that I came."
"Then I am very sorry you should have come," answered Cecil gravely.
"Are you still so hard-hearted?"
"Mr. O'Boyneville! Is it a gentlemanly act to follow me here, where I have no power to avoid you, and to talk to me in this manner? If you come here for your own pleasure, to make one of an agreeable party, I am as happy to see you as any one else in this house can be. But if you come here to persecute me by attentions which are as ungentlemanly as they are foolish, I shall beg my aunt to take me away from this house to-morrow morning."
The barrister looked at her pale proud face with an expression of profound sorrow.
"That will do, Lady Cecil," he said; "that is quite enough. I thought what you said the other day might mean only a lady's negative. I thought I was too abrupt—that I surprised and offended you by my way of plunging into the subject, and so on. But I see now that I was mistaken. Good-night, Lady Cecil; I shall never offend you again."
He held out his hand, but he scarcely clasped her slender fingers as they rested for one brief moment in his expansive palm. The sadness in his voice, the sorrowful expression of his face had touched her, and she felt the natural womanly desire to heal the wounds she herself had inflicted. But before she could think of any thing to say which should in some degree console the Irishman's wounded feelings, yet in no manner embolden him to renew his attack, Mr. O'Boyneville had left her, and was bidding his host good-night.
Lady Cecil had to endure a lecture from her aunt before she shut herself in her own room that night; and when she went to bed it was to think compassionately of the Irish barrister's sorrow.
And while she pitied him, Mr. O'Boyneville settled himself complacently to his placid slumber, and mused upon the evening's adventures as he fell asleep.
"You are very haughty and you're very resolute; but you'll marry me sooner or later, for all that, my bright Cecil, my beautiful Cecil. It isn't possible for a man to be as much in earnest as I am, and yet wind up by making a failure."