CHAPTER XII.
MR. O'BOYNEVILLE'S MOTION FOR A NEW TRIAL.
The Nasedale picnic, or the Nasedale archery-meeting, was a success; but it may be that the noble supply of sparkling wines, the gorgeous banquet of delicate viands, set forth under a spacious marquee, contributed as much as the excitement of the toxophilite contest to the gaiety of the day. Mr. O'Boyneville forgot his profession, and behaved as if he had spent the greater part of his existence at toxophilite meetings and picnics. Cecil heard more than one young lady declare that the Irishman was the life of the party, and she had reason to be grateful to him for his delicate avoidance of her; even though her good taste might compel her to condemn his too obvious flirtation with more than one fair damsel in Lincoln green.
But if Cecil was glad to be released from the attentions of the Queen's Counsel, Cecil's aunt was by no means pleased with the altered aspect of affairs. She glowered upon the unconscious O'Boyneville from the distance whence she watched his proceedings, and was snappishly disposed towards the young ladies with whom he had flirted whenever they happened to cross her path. Once only in the course of the day had she any opportunity of addressing her niece confidentially, and then her manner assumed its bitterest shade.
"I hope you are satisfied now, Lady Cecil Chudleigh," she said.
And at night, when the long day's festivity and flirtation, and archery and croquet, and dust and sunshine, had at length come to a close, Mrs. MacClaverhouse was eager to attack her dependant. But Cecil stopped her at the first word.
"Pray do not say any more about this business, auntie," she said, in a quiet resolute tone. "If you are angry with me because I am unwilling to marry Mr. O'Boyneville, whom you wish me to marry only because he is rich, I must submit to your anger, and leave you. I will not stop with you to be persecuted upon such a subject; and if I have displeased you, I can only thank you for all your past goodness to me and bid you good-bye."
If people ever said "Hoity-toity!" Mrs. MacClaverhouse was just in the humour to have indulged in such an ejaculation. But she contented herself with exclaiming,
"Well, I'm sure! The young women of the present day fly in a passion if you venture to say an unpleasant word to them. The world is moving on at a nice pace, upon my word. I wonder what the children of the rising generation will be like, and how they'll treat their mothers and aunts. I suppose they'll take the story of the Grecian daughter out of those children's story-books, and supply its place with 'The Obedient Father,' or 'The Dutiful Grandmother,' or 'Parental Submission,' or something of that kind. You may go to bed, Lady Cecil; and since you are bent upon ending your days as an indoor pauper, you must go your own way, and I wash my hands of all responsibility."
The dowager carried matters with a high hand, but Cecil had vanquished her nevertheless; and though Mr. O'Boyneville had left Nasedale before the family met at the breakfast-table, Mrs. MacClaverhouse forbore to bewail his departure in her niece's presence. He had gone; but when his circuit work was over he came back again, and made himself a favourite with all the household. He had his own little study, and he had some of the judge's law-books carried thither for his use. He spent three or four hours every morning in hard work; and for the rest of the day was the life of the party, talking, arguing, disputing, putting down listless visitors, and laughing his great haw-haw laugh at their discomfiture; cross-examining pretentious talkers, and bringing them to shame; flattering frivolous matrons, expounding great political theories with much flourishing of his white hands, delighting the Anglo-Indian judge by respectful attention to his anecdotes, offending and pleasing people a hundred times a day, and making himself the principal figure in every group, his voice the ruling voice in every discussion.
And in all this time Lady Cecil had no reason to complain of his presence. He was true to the quiet tone of resignation with which he had received her reproof on the first night of his coming to Nasedale. If he addressed her now, it was as nearly in the ordinary tone of polite society as was possible to this rough diamond of the British law-courts. Nor did he in any special manner seek her society. Mrs. MacClaverhouse sniffed ominously as she watched the eligible bachelor's attentions to other young ladies, while Cecil sat unnoticed and apparently forgotten by her late admirer. But the dowager refrained from remonstrance, and only allowed stray allusions to the horrors of genteel pauperism, and the miserable destiny of the unprotected female, to crop up now and then in her confidential talk with her niece.
And Cecil was satisfied. She had subdued her aunt, and had freed herself from the unwelcome attentions of an audacious adorer. She was inclined to feel kindly disposed towards Mr. O'Boyneville now that he no longer presented himself before her in the absurd position of a lover. She was able to appreciate his cleverness now that her aunt no longer harped upon the amount of his income. She owned to herself that many a girl in her position would have been glad to accept the hand and heart of this stalwart, good-looking, loud-voiced Irishman. She grew accustomed to his noisy laugh, his boisterous gaiety, his energetic declamation. His animal spirits in this rare holiday time made him as boisterous as an overgrown schoolboy; and there is always something pleasant in the fresh joyousness of a schoolboy in the abstract, however obnoxious that member of society may make himself in the concrete. Lady Cecil, who had begun by thinking Lauren O'Boyneville the most unpleasant of men, came to consider him as a person whose friendship at least was worth possessing.
He had spent a week at Nasedale, talking every morning of leaving before night, and lingering day after day until the week was out! But at last he announced his departure so positively, that to have changed his mind after such an announcement would have been a weakness unworthy a man of business. A vacancy had arisen in a certain northern borough, and some of Mr. O'Boyneville's friends had persuaded him to allow himself to be put in nomination. To linger longer in that garden of Armida called Nasedale would be to endanger this new ambition. Every body was loud in lamentation of his departure, with the exception of those younger and more superciliously indifferent gentlemen whom he had made a point of annihilating once or twice in the course of every evening.
The feminine portion of the community was not behind-hand in the expression of regret. The young ladies declared they should miss Mr. O'Boyneville "terribly," "awfully;" one rather fast young lady went so far as to say "disgustingly." Had he not appointed himself the umpire of their toxophilite matches? Had he not learned the whole art of croquet in half an hour, and then insisted on playing after a fashion of his own, whereby he had split a dozen or so of walnut-wood balls in a week? Had he not thrown them into convulsions of laughter one evening by conducting a mock trial of a case of breach of promise,—the broken pledge being that of a botanically-disposed young gentleman who had promised to go out for a woodland ramble with three botanically-disposed young ladies, and had gone partridge shooting instead? Was he not the most delightful middle-aged creature in existence?—and not so dreadfully middle-aged either, for he could scarcely be forty—and what is forty, but the prime of life, the meridian of intellectual splendour?
To such discourse as this Cecil had to listen during the rainy morning which succeeded Mr. O'Boyneville's departure. The feminine assembly in the pretty old-fashioned painted drawing-room enlivened the labours of décalcomanie and Berlin wool-work with their praises of the departed barrister.
The matrons were as enthusiastic as their daughters. Of all partners at whist there was no one they had ever met so invincible as Mr. O'Boyneville, although he had declared that he had not handled a card since his boyhood; and then he was so unlike the young men who call a middle-aged lady "a venerable party," and a sober married man a "dozy old bird." And then—and then—and then—there seemed no end to the feminine laudation of Laurence O'Boyneville. Only two ladies in that assembly were silent, and those two were Cecil Chudleigh and Mrs. MacClaverhouse. But an occasional impatient sniff from the dowager gave evidence of her state of mind.
He was gone, and every one was loud in his praise. He was gone; and though Cecil Chudleigh had only been accustomed to his presence within the last six or seven days, the place seemed to her just a little dull and empty without him, and she was fain to confess to herself that she as well as the others missed the sound of his sonorous voice, the gaiety of his boisterous laugh.
And from thinking of the departed Queen's Counsel, she went on, by some indefinable train of thought, to pondering upon the dull blank life of spinsterhood and poverty that lay before her; to muse a little sadly upon the text of all her aunt's sermons—her lonely helplessness, her penniless dependence. The present was well enough so long as it lasted. She was happy, or at any rate, content, even though the dowager's temper grew sharper, and the dowager's tongue more bitter, every day. She was resigned to the prospect of alternating between Dorset Square and watering-places and other people's houses for the rest of her life. But there were times when her pride revolted against the whole scheme of her existence, and a vision of the future arose before her, blank and terrible. She was such an unnecessary creature, such a mere waif and stray, to be drifted hither and thither on every tide which carried her kinswoman; a lady's-maid without a lady's-maid's wages; a slave without a slave's apathy.
"Perhaps my aunt is right after all," she thought, bitterly, "and I have been foolish to throw away any chance that would have given me release from such an existence."
The day was wet, and dull, and miserable; the sort of day so harmoniously described in Mr. Longfellow's poem. The dead leaves fell from the dripping trees in the park, and the splash of the rain upon the terrace made a monotonous accompaniment to conversation. The gentlemen of the household had defied Jupiter Pluvius, and had set off at early morning, provided with water-proof garments and the clumpiest of shooting-boots, to wage war upon innocent young partridges in stubble and turnip-field. But they came home at three; and after a tremendous luncheon and a careful toilet, presented themselves in the drawing-room, where they proposed an immediate adjournment for a game of billiards.
The young ladies were delighted to accept the invitation. Two or three good-natured matrons consented to join the party; while less vivacious dames discovered suddenly that they had important letters to write in their own rooms, which important correspondence was popularly supposed to be the ladylike excuse for an after-luncheon nap. Mrs. MacClaverhouse was among the matrons who retired to her apartment.
"I suppose you'll come up stairs to have some tea at six, Lady Cecil," she said to her niece, whom she had addressed in this ceremonious manner throughout the visit of Mr. O'Boyneville.
"But you'll come and play, Lady Cecil?" cried one of the young ladies.
"No, thank you, dear; I, too, have got some letters to write."
"I don't believe a bit in people's letters!" exclaimed the impetuous young damsel. "Letter-writing in country-houses is nothing but an excuse for being unsociable;—isn't it, dear Mrs. Mountjoy? If I were you I'd put up an inscription over my hall-door: 'No letters to be written on any pretence whatever.' I would do away with the post-bag, and oblige my visitors to correspond with friends at a distance by electric telegraph.'"
After which the lively damsel skipped off with her arm encircling her dear Mrs. Mountjoy's waist, and Cecil found herself alone in the drawing-room.
Of course she had letters to write—if she found herself equal to the labour of writing them. Where is the civilised being who can honestly declare that he or she has wronged no man in the matter of neglected correspondence? Cecil was deeply in debt to half-a-dozen lively friends who wrote her long descriptions of the places where they were staying, and were eager to receive her account of the place where she was staying, and the people whom she met there. She was in debt to Flo, who sent her voluminous epistles from Brighton, with pen-and-ink sketches of eccentric costumes to be seen on the King's Road, and caricatures of Mr. Lobyer in divers attitudes. He passed the greater part of his existence on the Brighton Railway, Flo told her friend. "And if the Brighton line were not the best in England, the unhappy being would be reduced to a state of imbecility by the effects of railway-travelling," added Miss Crawford.
Cecil meant to write her letters before the first dinner-bell rang; but when the billiard-players had left her, she sank into a luxurious easy-chair by the fire, and sat looking dreamily at the red coals. She was in one of those melancholy moods which come upon a woman sometimes without any tangible reason, but which are not the less sad because their sadness is vague and intangible. For the moment she abandoned herself utterly to sorrowful musings. The past—that shadowy past which always comes back to the gayest of us with a sorrowful aspect, returned to Cecil as she brooded over the low, neglected fire. Her father, her mother—the loved and lost—whose faces had once made the sole brightness of her life, looked at her once more out of the shadows. She thought of what her life might have been if her father's fortune had never been wasted. Before her sad eyes arose the picture of the home that might have been hers if her only brother had lived to mend his wild ways and hold his own among honest men.
"I should never have felt this bitter sense of loneliness if my brother had been my protector," she thought. "There is something in my aunt's kindness—even when she is most kind—that reminds me how little right I have to her love or protection."
Abandoned to such melancholy thoughts as these, Cecil kept little note of the progress of time. A servant came into the room to replenish the fire, but his coming and going did not arouse her from her sombre reverie. The dull afternoon sky grew duller, and her thoughts grew sadder as the sky darkened. A bell rang, but she took no heed of its ringing. What was it to her who came or went? In the utter solitude of her life there was no room for care, for there was no one upon earth except her aunt whose fate was in any way involved with her own. She heard a rapid footstep in the hall, a hand turning the handle of the door, and she shrugged her shoulders impatiently, knowing that she would have to put aside her sorrowful thoughts, to smile upon the intruder.
She looked up as the door opened, and it was with unmitigated astonishment that she beheld Laurence O'Boyneville.
"Mr. O'Boyneville! I thought you had left us for good?"
"And so I had, Lady Cecil, as I thought. But there are some places, or rather some people, whom it is very difficult to leave. I have been to London, got through a gigantic day's business, made arrangements for starting on my parliamentary work to-morrow instead of to-day, and have come back here—for an hour."
"For an hour?" echoed Cecil.
"Yes," answered the barrister, taking out his watch, and comparing it with the clock on the mantelpiece. "It's now half-past five by me; though it's only a quarter-past by my friend Mephistopheles and the ivy-leaves. At 7.36 the up-train leaves that miserable shed called Desborough station. I was lucky enough to get a fly this time, and the antiquated vehicle is waiting for me."
"I fear Mr. Mountjoy has gone out," said Cecil, who imagined that her late admirer must needs have some important business to transact with his host, since only some affair of importance could have brought him back so hurriedly. "But you will find almost every body in the billiard-room, and no doubt some one there will be able to tell you where he is."
"You are very good; but I don't want to see Mr. Mountjoy."
"You don't?"
"Not——" Mr. O'Boyneville was on the verge of saying "Not a ha'porth," but he substituted, "not in the least. In fact, I'm very grateful to the dear old fellow for being out of the way. I have come back to see you, Lady Cecil."
There was a little pause. Cecil could find nothing to say. The sense of Mr. O'Boyneville's power subjugated her as she had never before been subjugated. She was like the weakest of little birds who was ever spell-bound by the gaze of a monster serpent.
Whether it was animal magnetism, whether it was the intellectual force of a dominant will, she never knew. From first to last, she knew only that Laurence O'Boyneville exercised an influence over her which no other living creature had ever exercised, and that she was powerless to resist his dominion.
The Irishman seated himself, and drew his chair close to hers.
"Cecil," he said, "why should we trifle with our destiny? In the first hour in which I saw you, something told me that you were to be my wife, and in pursuing you I have only obeyed the voice of my fate. I am not a romantic man, and the current of my life has taken its course between the most arid and blossomless shores that border the great river: but some remnant of my national superstition clings to me still; and from the first moment in which I looked upon you, I felt that you were something more to me than the crowds of pretty women whose faces have floated past me like the faces of a dream. You have thought me insolent, presumptuous! Believe me, Lady Cecil, I have been neither. It has been no confidence in my own merits that has made me so bold. I have been bold only because I believed in my fate. When I came here, I came at peril of hopes that had once been the brightest part of my life. The man whose dinner-table I left unceremoniously to come to this house is a man who can raise me to the bench. I, to whom social life is almost as strange as it would be to an Ojibbeway, have wasted a week in knocking about wooden balls and holding bad hands at long whist. And I have done this because I wanted to be near you, Lady Cecil. I knew from the first that you were intended to be my wife, and that it rested with me alone to win you. Cecil, dear Cecil, are you going to fly in the face of your destiny?"
These were the tenderest words he had ever addressed to her. His voice, practised in every transition, sank to its most melodious tones as he uttered these last words. Perhaps there is some magnetic power in such a voice. Cecil, looking up at the earnest face that was bent towards hers, felt herself subdued by some wondrous fascination, and knew that she had found her master. Had he wooed her at any other moment it might have been different; but he came to her in an interval of depression, which had subdued her courage and crushed her pride. Never had the dull stagnation of her life seemed to her so dull and hopeless as it had seemed to-day. Never had the prospect of the future appeared so utterly blank and empty. Her aunt's sermonising, her sense of loneliness, her yearning desire for some change in the routine of her profitless life, all conspired to strengthen the cause of Mr. O'Boyneville.
"Cecil, are you going to send me away again?"
"Suppose I do not believe in your fatalistic theory?" she asked, with a faint attempt at a laugh.
"Your incredulity will not help you. What is it the Turks say? 'Kismet'—It is written. You are to be my wife, Lady Cecil. It is only a question of time, and why should we waste time in discussion? Sooner or later the hour of victory will come. Cecil, you thought me an impertinent fool when I first told you of my love; you know me better now, and you must know that I am in earnest. I have kept myself aloof from you during the last week in order to show you that I can obey you. If I disobey you in coming back to-day, it is because I obey my fate, which is stronger than you."
Mr. O'Boyneville had composed this little speech during his downward journey, and was rather inclined to be proud of it.
"Cecil, what is to be my answer?"
For some moments Lady Cecil was silent, her head averted from Mr. O'Boyneville, her eyes looking dreamily at the fire. She was so lonely, so unprotected; and here was this man, whose intellectual power impressed her with a sense of protection and support; here was this man, whom she had scorned and rejected, once more at her side, too faithful to accept repulse, still eager to give her shelter and affection, to lift her from the dreary uncertainty of her position into woman's most fitting sphere. An hour ago, and she had felt herself so utterly friendless; and now here were the love and devotion of a lifetime lying at her feet, to be again rejected if she pleased. It seemed almost as if Providence, taking compassion upon her loneliness, had thrown this one last chance in her way.
Her voice trembled a little as she answered her lover.
"I do not know what I have done to deserve your love," she said; "but I suppose love never yet was measured by desert. I do know that I cannot give you what the world calls love in return. The only person I ever loved left me to marry another woman. He left me because it was his duty to do so; and I was proud of him because he was so good and true. He is married now, and I have every reason to believe he is happy. There is little chance that he and I will ever meet again; but if we do, we shall meet as strangers. It was my bounden duty to tell you this, Mr. O'Boyneville, before I answered your last question. Has my confession altered your sentiments towards me?"
"No, Lady Cecil; it has only made me admire you a little more than I did before. Do you think I expected to win the whole heart of such a woman as you, all at once? No, Cecil; when a man loves the woman he marries as truly as I love you, it must be his own fault if he does not teach her to love him before the end of the chapter, always provided she is a good woman."
"And you still offer me your affection?"
"I do. As heartily and as unreservedly as I offered it to you in the first instance."
"And you will be my friend, my protector, my counsellor, all the wide world to me—for I am very friendless—and will be contented with such gratitude and such affection as a woman gives to the best and dearest friend she has on earth?"
"More than content! unutterably happy!" cried Laurence O'Boyneville; "and by Jove it's a quarter to six, and it's as much as I shall do to catch the up-train," he added, in his most business-like manner, as he started to his feet. He only lingered long enough to take Lady Cecil in his arms, as if she had been a baby, to imprint one resounding kiss upon her forehead, and to exclaim, "God bless you, and good-bye, my darling!" and lo, he was gone.
"And I shall have a friend—a husband and protector—a home," thought Cecil, with a thrill of happiness, such as she would a few hours before have been slow to believe could have been inspired by Laurence O'Boyneville.
She was glad to be bound to some one, to have some one bound to her; glad to be the promised wife of this Irish barrister, whom she had so lately spoken of shudderingly as a dreadful man.