CHAPTER XIII.
CECIL'S HONEYMOON.
Before the end of the year Cecil Chudleigh had become Cecil O'Boyneville. The barrister was not a man to lose time in making himself master of the citadel that had capitulated, and having once obtained Cecil's consent to be his wife, he moved heaven and earth to bring about a speedy marriage. The powers that be were in this instance represented by Mrs. MacClaverhouse and the Mountjoys. The dowager was delighted to marry her penniless niece to a man who confessed that his professional income was over two thousand a-year, and that he had invested between ten and fifteen thousand in certain very profitable railway shares, the interest of which he was prepared to settle upon Lady Cecil during his lifetime, while the principal would be hers at his death. The Mountjoys and all the Nasedale visitors were delighted by the idea of a wedding, and young ladies who had heard of Cecil's engagement from Mrs. Mountjoy, and were anxious to disport themselves as bridesmaids, besieged the poor girl with entreaties, and bewildered her with their praises of Mr. O'Boyneville.
Against so much friendly persuasion, with the mighty O'Boyneville swooping down upon her suddenly by all manner of express trains, and by every complication of loop-line and junction, Cecil was powerless to make any successful resistance. She had promised to be his wife. She was grateful for his affection, and she looked forward with a sense of relief to the marriage which was at least to be the end of her dependence. And then Laurence O'Boyneville's influence was not without its weight. From the hour in which Cecil had promised to be his wife, his power over her had grown stronger with every moment she spent in his society. The strength of will which had carried him triumphantly over all the obstacles in his path sustained him here; the singleness of his purpose, the depth of his feeling, invested him with a kind of dignity. That combined force of a strong will and brilliant intellect had an almost magnetic influence over Cecil. If she did not love her future husband, she at least felt that it was something to be loved by such a man, and the strong current of his will drifted her along with it. Walking in the avenue of Nasedale, under a dull October sky, with her hand under Laurence O'Boyneville's arm, and inspired with some vague sense of protection by the stalwart figure that sheltered her from the autumn wind, Cecil consented that the wedding should take place early in November. She could not oppose her lover's wishes. From the moment in which she had accepted his devotion, Mr. O'Boyneville had in a manner taken possession of her judgment and her will; and it mattered little when he claimed her entirely for his own.
"You are so good, Laurence," she said once, "and I have such a sense of protection in your presence, that I sometimes fancy you are like a new father to me. Indeed, you have more influence over me than my father had, though I loved him very, very dearly. I suppose it is because your will is so much stronger than his."
Mr. O'Boyneville nodded, and pressed the little hand resting on his arm. Another man of forty engaged to a woman of twenty-two might have been slightly disconcerted by Cecil's speech; but Laurence had implicit faith in the divine right of honest love, and in his thoughts there was no shadow of fear for the future.
"I must be a fool indeed if I can't teach her to love me, loving her as I do," he thought.
Backwards and forwards, by loop-line and junction, by midnight express and morning mail, rushing through the chill mists and fogs of autumnal dawn, sped Mr. O'Boyneville, all through that bleak October. He took his rest in snug corners of railway carriages, and lived upon sandwiches, peppery soups, and adulterated coffee. His electioneering business went on as smoothly as his love-suit, and provincial electors yielded readily to the beguiling accents of the Hibernian candidate. But the candidate's heart was at Nasedale, and he sacrificed his parliamentary ambition to his love for Cecil. He made light of two or three hundred miles of cross-country travelling, if thereby he could obtain a quiet day with his future wife. To walk with her in the long avenue; to stand with his back to the fire, talking to her as she bent over her work; to drive her in a mail-phaeton, with a couple of merry girls in the back seat, and a pair of the most unmanageable horses in the judge's stables devouring the road before him,—these things delighted the man who had spent the best years of his life amidst the clamour of law courts, and in the dull quiet of dingy chambers. There was very little in common between himself and the woman he loved. But he had that dash of romance which the hardest friction of a practical existence cannot entirely obliterate from the composition of an Irishman; and he was really and truly in love.
So one misty morning in November the bells pealed gaily from the village church, whose Norman tower loomed dark above the leafless woods of Nasedale Park; and the Nasedale servants were gay and busy. It was to be a quiet wedding. Cecil had been earnest in her entreaties that there might be no unnecessary trouble incurred by her cordial friends; but the childless Mountjoys were as pleased as if they had been arranging a daughter's marriage ceremonial.
"I shall be quite angry if you talk about trouble, my dear Cecil," said the kind-hearted hostess. "Here have Horatio and I been puzzling our brains to find out something or other to enliven the house in this wretched weather; and just at the very time when we were most at a loss for amusement and occupation, this marriage of yours happens to afford us both. You don't know what it is, my dear, to have nine marriageable girls in a house, with only three unmarried men, and those three more listless, and lazy, and stupid than words can describe, or you wouldn't talk of giving trouble. All I dread is the reaction which we shall suffer when it's all over, and you and Mr. O'Boyneville have gone to Ireland."
Thus it happened, that although it had been promised that the wedding should be a private one, the programme of the day grew to an alarming extent before the day arrived. The officers who had assisted at the archery meeting were invited to the breakfast, much to the delight of the nine young ladies, and much to the aggravation of the three listless young gentlemen, who gave utterance to the most crushing sarcasms when the martial visitors were alluded to, and affected to consider the profession of arms entirely incompatible with the faintest scintillation of intelligence, or the smallest modicum of education.
"Yes," drawled the most listless of the listless ones, "Captain Harduppe is a remarkably fine fellow. Of course it's a great merit in a man to be six foot two and three-quarters, and a merit which society is bound to recognise. But did any body ever hear the captain read? or did any body ever see the captain write? It's my belief that the greatest pull the Jew-bill-discounters have over their military customers lies in the fact that they witness the agonies which the martial mind experiences in the process of signing its name; and it's also my belief that when a cavalry officer takes up the Times and throws it down again, exclaiming, 'Haw! nothing in the papaws to-day, I s'ppose,' he does so simply because he can't read."
Of course Mr. O'Boyneville, happening to overhear some such speech as this, arose in his might and crushed the scorner, proving that from the days of Cæsar, whom in the excitement of argument he called "Sayzer," to the time of the conqueror of Waterloo, soldiers had been even more renowned for the power of their intellect than for the prowess of their arms, and that the helmet and buckler of Minerva were only typical of the fact that from the earliest period of history, wisdom and valour had gone hand-in-hand.
Through the misty November morning went the train of carriages to the little church where Mr. O'Boyneville awaited his bride, after spending the night on loop-line and at junction, and after making a hurried toilet at the village inn.
There was no rain, only a soft autumnal mist, which took the fresh crispness out of tulle bonnets, and the artificial undulations out of feminine bandeaux. But the wedding was a success in spite of the weather. There was no weeping during the ceremonial, and it was only when the dowager kissed her niece in the vestry that one solitary teardrop glittered in each of that matron's piercing eyes. The bridegroom was in the highest spirits, though in the midst of his gaiety a very close observer—if such people ever were to be found in a wedding-party—might have detected an under current of deeper feeling near akin to tears.
There was the usual monument of crystallised sugar, and silver foliage, and artificial orange-blossom; the usual combination of the savoury solidity of Fortnum and Mason, with the airy frivolity and bilious sweetness of Gunter; the usual popping of corks, and pleasant sound of frozen liquids trickling into cool, fragile glasses; the usual protestations from young ladies who infinitely preferred tea or coffee to sparkling hock or moselle, but who, overcome by masculine persuasion, generally ended by drinking the latter; the usual open renunciation of her sex from the one fast young lady generally to be found in every party, who always happens to sit next an officer, and who tells him confidentially that she likes sparkling moselle, and doesn't believe in the girls who pretend not to like it.
Nor could the breakfast reasonably be expected to come to an end without a little speechifying. The judge, in a few appropriate, well-rounded sentences, invoked for his guests all those impossible blessings which it is the fashion to pray for at a wedding-breakfast; while, in the heat of returning thanks for these good wishes, Mr. O'Boyneville was betrayed into speaking of his host as "his ludship," and on more than one occasion addressed his audience as "ladies and gentlemen of the jury." And by-and-by appeared the traditional chariot and post-horses, driven by that blue and antique postillion who seems to emerge from the shadows of the past only on such occasions. And then there was a little animated flirtation in the hall among the nine unmarried young ladies and the cavalry officers; while the listless young gentlemen looked on with countenances expressive of unutterable scorn; and elderly Anglo-Indian merchants and lawyers, and red-faced Anglo-Indian colonels and majors gathered comfortably round their host at one end of the long table in the dining-room, telling old Anglo-Indian stories, and laughing at old Anglo-Indian jokes.
In due time Lady Cecil came down the broad old-fashioned staircase, dressed in pale-grey silk, and wearing an airy bonnet that seemed constructed soley with a grey feather and a large full-blown blush-rose, while the handsomest of her aunt's Indian shawls draped her slender figure like a classic mantle of scarlet and gold. Mrs. MacClaverhouse had insisted upon her niece wearing this shawl and no other.
"It's the last but one that stupid extravagant Hector sent me, and if I know any thing about Indian shawls, I know that this one must have cost him something like a hundred guineas; and as I'm not rich enough to buy you a wedding-present, you must take this, Cecil,—though why the fact of a person being married should oblige other people to half ruin themselves in the purchase of bracelets and dressing-cases is more than I can understand. However, that has nothing to do with you and me, Cecil. I'm your aunt, and your nearest living relative, so it would be hard indeed if I couldn't give you something; and if you don't take Hector's shawl I shall be very much offended: and mind you don't go wasting your husband's money on trumpery Dresden china; for when I'm dead and gone you'll have more mandarin jars, and carved ivory chessmen, and inlaid caskets, and envelope-boxes, than you'll know what to do with."
Whereupon Mrs. MacClaverhouse kissed her niece, shed one more solitary tear, which she brushed away sharply, and followed the bride down the staircase. And so it happened that Cecil went to her husband wrapped in the shawl which Hector Gordon had chosen in Calcutta three years before.
The traditionary chariot and post-horses drove away amidst a volley of cheers; and the very fast young lady, who was rather proud of her foot, launched a fairy bronze boot into the air as the bridal chariot departed, the heel of which fairy boot coming in contact with the eyebrow of one of the listless gentlemen, inflicted a blow that ultimately resulted in that vulgar appearance of mingled blues and greens which is popularly described as a black eye.
The last which the Nasedale party saw of the bride and bridegroom was Mr. O'Boyneville's radiant face at the carriage-window, and Mr. O'Boyneville's big white hand waving a parting salutation. And then the Irishman realised the fondest desire of his later years. He went back to the land of his youth, and with his young wife by his side trod once more the country of his birth. He had consulted Cecil's wishes as to that honeymoon tour; but as he had previously revealed his own yearning for a glimpse of his native town, the river and mountains so familiar to his childhood, she set aside all thought of her own inclination.
"Let us go to Ireland," she said; "I know you wish to see your own country once more, and it will be all new ground to me."
"You really wish to see Ireland?"
"Really."
"Then we will go there—but only on one condition. There is a place in Devonshire I have heard you talk of—the place where your childhood was spent. We will get across country somehow or other from Holyhead, and we will visit it together, Cecil."
She looked up at her lover, and smiled. Of all pleasures that he could have offered to her this was the sweetest. The thought was one of the inspirations of love.
So Mr. O'Boyneville took his wife to Ireland in the dull November weather. There are autumnal seasons in which "the rain it raineth every day" in this green isle encircled by the sea; and it seemed to Cecil as if a new deluge were about to blot fair Hibernia from the universe. It was no fitting season, nor had the barrister sufficient leisure for the ordinary pleasure-seeker's tour. The newly-wedded pair spent a few wet days in Dublin, driving in the Phœnix Park, where the autumn sunsets were very beautiful to behold in the brief intervals of the rain; and then one bleak early morning an express train bore Cecil and her husband southward to Shannonville, and under the cloudy November skies Laurence O'Boyneville once more beheld the city of his youth. He had looked forward with such a fond yearning to the day in which he should tread those familiar streets once more; and now the day had come, and the long dreamed-of pleasure was a very sad sensation after all. The glory of Shannonville had fled since the Irishman last had looked upon it, and the sight of its decay smote him to the heart. Modern civilisation and the mighty steam demon who makes naught of distance, and but little of time, had left Shannonville far behind. Commerce had no longer need of that far southern port; and where rich granaries had stored the wealth of southern Ireland, empty storehouses looked blankly on a deserted quay. There, where the vessels of many traders had jostled one another in the crowded docks, a fisherman's Briccawn was slackly moored by a rotting rope. The broad streets were standing yet, but the crowd that had once made them gay had vanished. The club-house was still called a club-house; but where were the noisy revellers who had once made its walls resonant with their boisterous laughter? And the dashing young men, and the lovely blue-eyed maidens, whoso presence had rendered the chief thoroughfare of Shannonville so delightful a promenade—where were they? Gone—gone! Only pinched faces looked up at the hotel-windows where Cecil gazed sadly out upon her husband's native city. Only squalor and misery, ruin and decay, greeted Laurence O'Boyneville as he walked slowly along the deserted quays, looking for the vanished brightness of his youth. He went back to his wife sick at heart.
"The place is as dreary as a city of the dead, Cecil," he said. "I have brought you to desolation and ruin, my darling. We'll leave Shannonville by the first train to-morrow morning. The sight of the old place cuts me to the heart."
But Mr. O'Boyneville grew tolerably cheerful by-and-by, and took his wife to dine with the oldest friends he had—the oldest surviving friends, for there was a sad list of the dead whom he had known and loved in Shannonville. Lady Cecil was pleased with the kind simple people, who received her with open arms, and were unceasing in their praises of her husband's youthful virtues. The twenty years of his professional career seemed to melt away like a dream as he sat in that Shannonville drawing-room, where tall young ladies whom he had dandled in his strong arms looked at him wonderingly, and where youthful matrons, whom he remembered as tiny toddling children, brought their tiny toddling children to his middle-aged knees.
People talked as if events of a quarter of a century back had been the events of yesterday. "And don't you remember the picnic at Nikdeilslootheram, Laurence?" "And I'm sure you've not forgotten the dance at Mr. O'Hennesy's, when Patrick MacShindy proposed to Flora Machrae in the little back-parlour, and old Mr. O'Kelly caught him on his knees?" "And don't you remember the murder at Castle Sloggerom, and Major O'Wokes riding fifty miles across country on his chestnut mare, Devil's-hoof, to take the scoundrel that did it? Ah, Laurence, Shannonville's but a quiet place now, and you'd scarcely know it if you came back amongst us again."
But even that genial evening amongst old friends could not quite restore Mr. O'Boyneville's spirits.
"I'm sure you won't care to stay here, Cecil," he said, as they drove home to the hotel; "and I think my heart would break if I spent a week in the place."
So in the bleak November, under another cloudy sky, and with another day's ceaseless rain pattering against the windows of the railway carriage, Cecil and her husband went back to Dublin, and from Dublin to Holyhead, and thence across country to Exeter, and then to Chudleigh Combe. Here there was no sign of decay, save the beautiful decay of nature. Commercial civilisation had never approached within twenty miles of the secluded old mansion half buried in the woods; and the eternal loveliness of nature is subject to no changes, save those gradual transitions through which she passes for ever and ever, serenely beautiful in every phase.
The old woman who had charge of the deserted mansion was very glad to admit Mr. O'Boyneville and his wife; for the portly presence of the barrister, and the carriage and pair that had brought them from the nearest post-town, augured a handsome recompense for her trouble. She led the visitors through the empty rooms, where the atmosphere was chill and musty, and where the mice behind the wainscot scampered away at the sound of the intruders' footfall. The old-fashioned furniture had a wasted, half-starved look to modern eyes. It seemed as if the chairs and tables had been sentient things, and were slowly perishing from inanition. As the aspect of Shannonville had depressed Mr. O'Boyneville, so the cold dampness of this untenanted mansion depressed Cecil.
"I can't bear to see the dear old rooms looking so cold and cheerless," she said. "I can show you the very chair in which grandmamma used to sit; the little table on which I used to write."
She opened an old-fashioned square piano, and ran her fingers gently along the keys; but, tenderly as she touched the notes, the instrument gave out a shrill discordant wail that was almost like the shriek of a banshee. But if the aspect of the place saddened Mr. O'Boyneville's young wife, her sadness was not all pain: there was a tender pleasure mingled with her regret.
"You could never guess how often I have seen the old place in my dreams, Laurence," she said, "amidst all the confusion, and contradiction, and absurdity that make dreams so bewildering. I have seen dead people restored to life, and have felt no surprise in seeing them. In a dream one always seems to forget that there is any such thing as death. I thank you a thousand times for bringing me here, Laurence. You could never believe how much I have wished to see the dear old home again."
"And now you see it in the hands of a stranger, and going to ruin, Cecil," said Mr. O'Boyneville. "The water comes through all the ceilings up stairs; and if the man who owns the place doesn't take care what he's about, there'll be a new roof wanted before very long."
But the old woman hereupon explained that the ownership was at present vested in the Court of Chancery. A suit was in progress, and had been in progress for the last three years, on settlement of which the entire property was to be realised for the benefit of the disputants.
"And if the place is to be worth any body's buying, it had need be sold soon," said the old woman, "for the rain do come in here and the rain do come in there, and the wind do come in everywhere, and the rats gnaw holes in the wainscot, and eat their way through the flooring, and the windows rattle of a winter's night to that degree, that the house isn't fit for a Christian to live in."
"A few hundreds laid out upon it would make it comfortable enough," said the practical Mr. O'Boyneville; "but I don't see how the place could ever be worth more than a hundred a-year at this distance from London; and it must sell as cheap as rags to give you five per cent. for your money."
Oh, if I had only been rich enough to buy it! she thought. She did not know any thing about percentages or profitable investments; but if she had been free to do her own will, she would have given every sixpence she possessed in the world to be owner of Chudleigh Combe.
And yet she never thought of asking Mr. O'Boyneville to purchase the dwelling-place she loved with some portion of the money he had settled upon her. She had tried with all her might to prevent the making of that settlement, and had told her lover that under no circumstances could she ever bring herself to look upon the money as her own.
"I have very little use for what people call pin-money," she said, "for you know, Laurence, that I have been accustomed all my life to be economical. Let me have fifty or sixty pounds a-year for my clothes if you like, and I will dress as well as I have ever been used to dress. But I don't want to be extravagant because you are generous."
The barrister kissed his affianced bride, and told her that she was an angel, and that she dressed exquisitely; but the settlement was made nevertheless, and Mrs. MacClaverhouse declared that Laurence O'Boyneville had acted nobly.
And during the visit to Chudleigh Combe he was very kind and very patient; though he examined the window-sashes, and sounded the partitions, and rattled the locks, and poked the ceilings, and peered up the chimneys, and jumped upon the floors with a view to testing the strength of the timbers, and altogether behaved in a more practical way than quite harmonised with Cecil's pensive spirit: but he gave her plenty of time for tender meditations while he prowled amongst stables and offices, tasted the water from a couple of pumps in a long stone courtyard, and measured the length and breadth of the grounds with a surveyor's accurate three-foot stride It was only when the autumn afternoon was deepening into evening that he swooped down upon Cecil, as she stood on the lawn by a rustic basket—that had once held such a wealth of geraniums, and in which now only a few straggling sprigs of mignonette lingered amid a wilderness of weeds—and asked her sharply if she was ready to go away.
"Yes, Laurence," she said, "quite ready."
And then, as they walked back to the carriage, she said, rather to herself than to her husband:
"I wonder who will buy Chudleigh Combe?"
"Ah, so do I," cried Mr. O'Boyneville, swinging his stick, "he'll have to spend something like a thousand pounds upon the place before he makes it habitable, whoever he is."