CHAPTER XIX.
TIDINGS FROM INDIA.
For Lady Cecil the summer months in Bloomsbury were very dreary. And it may be here confessed that Bloomsbury is rather dreary in the summer evenings, when the rifleman's "little drum has beat to bed" in the quadrangle before the Foundling Hospital, and vagrant children hawk pitiful bunches of flowers in the squares and streets. But are not the endless terraces and oblong squares of Tyburnia, and even the broad highways of Belgravia, apt to seem not a little dismal in the fading light, when the sickly gas-lamps struggle faintly with the last glimmer of day, and shabby wanderers prowl the pavements and look enviously at the rolling chariots of wealth?
Cecil O'Boyneville abandoned herself entirely to the unbroken monotony of her life. She had yet to learn to find her own society and her own occupations, in common with the wives of other busy men. She accepted the lot that fell into her lap, and did not attempt to change or modify it. Her husband was kind to her, generous, affectionate, confiding, and she wished to do her duty. If Laurence O'Boyneville made no change in his bachelor-habits, if he devoted his nights to study and his evenings to sleep, he had perhaps some excuse for his devotion to the profession he loved, in the fact that his wife made no attempt to alter the scheme of his existence. No salaried housekeeper could have been more submissive than the Earl of Aspendell's daughter showed herself to the sovereign will of her lord: so Mr. O'Boyneville told his old friends and familiars that he was the happiest fellow in existence, and that his wife was an angel.
He was happy, for the woman he loved received him with a tranquil smile when he went home to his dinner, and was content to sit opposite to him while he ate his hasty breakfast behind the Times newspaper. Even in his post-prandial slumbers he had a dim consciousness of that beloved presence. But he did not very frequently take the trouble to tell his young wife how dear she was to him. Having once won her to be the pride and delight of his quiet home, he took things for granted, and forgot that a man's real courtship only begins upon his wedding-day. If Cecil had complained of her life, Laurence O'Boyneville would have speedily set about adapting his existence to her pleasure; but she did not complain. She had married him because he loved her, and not because she loved him; and she shrank from indulging in the caprices which a wife who truly loved her husband would have exhibited without scruple.
A profound weariness of spirit took possession of the barrister's wife in the bright June weather, when the days were too brief for the glory of western London, and the midsummer evenings too long for tranquil Bloomsbury. For some time before her marriage it had seemed to Cecil Chudleigh as if the serious business of her life had been done with. She was not unhappy. She was not discontented. But she had finished with all the eager hopes and desires of existence. She wished for nothing, she expected nothing. One only yearning—and that no ardent or passionate desire—had remained to her after the one great sorrow of her life,—she had wished for a home; she had wished to be something more than a waif and stray in other people's houses. This wish had been realised, and henceforward there was nothing left for her to hope or fear.
She had married without love; and yet no base or mercenary motive had influenced her conduct. Truly and unreservedly had she given her faith to Laurence O'Boyneville. It is for the man who marries such a woman to win or lose the heart which is not—and yet is so nearly—his. Unhappily, Mr. O'Boyneville, with all honesty of purpose and generosity of heart, took the very way to lose the prize which, of all earthly treasures, he most desired to obtain. If the barrister's wife had dissolved into tears at the breakfast-table or disturbed his digestive organs by a storm of hysterics after dinner, Mr. O'Boyneville would have perceived that there was something out of gear amidst the machinery of his home, and would have done his uttermost to remedy the defect. But the disease which was undermining Lady Cecil's moral constitution was not sorrow; it was only the absence of joy. Of what could she complain, who desired nothing upon earth except a little rest after the weariness of her youth? She rested to her heart's content in the tranquil solitude of Brunswick Square, withdrawing herself day by day more completely from all old associations. If the days were joyless, they were at least without cares or troubles; the sordid perplexities of the past were done with—that slow torture called genteel poverty was hers no longer. An atmosphere of commonplace comfort pervaded the great O'Boyneville's household; and even in Dorset Square his presence seemed to carry with it an odour of prosperity—for Cecil was surprised to find that her aunt no longer bewailed the hardness of a dowager's lot, and the thievish propensities of landladies. Poor Cecil, who was so painfully familiar with every note in the gamut of Mrs. MacClaverhouse's domestic economy, was astonished to behold those expensive and unprofitable dishes, which of old had been excluded from the Dorset Square menus, now figuring frequently in the little banquets which the dowager provided for Mr. O'Boyneville and his wife.
"I ought to be happy," Cecil said to herself sometimes; and sometimes even in saying those words the faint odour of the sea came back to her like a breath of the past, and she saw the low grey shore below Fortinbras Castle, and Hector Gordon's face bent over her in passionate sadness.
"My fate was in my hand that day," she thought. "What would my life have been now if I had chosen otherwise than I did?"
It was not often that such thoughts as these disturbed the dull tranquillity of Cecil O'Boyneville's mind. She had learned to think very calmly of Hector Gordon, and the unknown future that might have been hers, long before she had plighted her faith to the barrister; and it was only now and then that the picture of the past flashed for a moment upon her mental vision, evoked into life and brightness by some mystic power of association. She had learned long ago to think of the Scottish captain almost as we think of the dead; and in counting the years that had passed since that delicious autumn holiday, she marvelled to find how few they were. It seemed so long since she had seen that quiet Hampshire coast—so long since she had sat in the shadowy drawing-room listening to the low music of her lover's voice.
The season came to a close, Trinity Term ended, and the long vacation began. Laurence O'Boyneville implored his wife to take up her abode at some pleasant watering-place while he went on circuit.
"You can ask your aunt to go with you, Cecil," he said; "and in that case you'll have the use of her maid, if you don't care about taking one of your own. Suppose we say Ryde; that's as nice a place as you can go to. I'll run across and take lodgings for you, and I'll get you a basket-chaise and a stout pony, that you can drive about the island to your heart's content. I want to see the sweet wild-rose tint come back to your cheeks, darling. You've been looking very pale lately."
It was not often that the speech of Laurence O'Boyneville the husband assimilated so nearly to that of Laurence O'Boyneville the lover, and Cecil rewarded him with a grateful smile.
"You are very kind, Laurence," she said; "but I know my aunt has made all manner of arrangements for the autumn and winter. She told me a few days ago that she has not a week disengaged. And I really don't care at all about going to the sea-side. I would just as soon remain in town while you are away."
"My darling girl," exclaimed the barrister, "if you stay in London all the summer you'll be ill."
But again and again Lady Cecil protested that she would be contented to spend her summer in Bloomsbury. If she could have gone to some quiet sea-coast village alone, with no companions except her books and music, she would have been very well pleased to escape from the wilderness of streets and squares. But a two-months' sojourn at a fashionable watering-place with a vivacious matron was something more than Cecil felt herself able to endure; and Mr. O'Boyneville seemed to take it for granted that his young wife must be protected by a chaperon when she left his sheltering wing.
"If you won't go to the sea-side," he said, "you might at least spend a few weeks with the Mountjoys. I know they'd be delighted to have you."
"But indeed, Laurence, I shall be happier at home," Cecil pleaded; "I had so much visiting in country-houses, you know, before our marriage."
The barrister shrugged his shoulders. He had no leisure for further argument. His circuit work was very heavy, and his brain was already occupied by the claims and the counterclaims of Snooks versus Jones; of Simpkins against the Mayor and Corporation of Guzzleton (involving knotty questions under the Lands Clauses Consolidation Act); an action for nuisance by Tittlebat against The Cesspool-Utilising Association, for allowing their reservoirs to drain into his fishponds; and by a variety of other cases in which sundry crooked and troublesome bits of evidence were, with the aid of his juniors, to be made smooth and straight for the benefit of those provincial litigants and delinquents whose rights, wrongs, interests, and defences had been intrusted to the popular O'Boyneville. Thus, in this, as in all other cases, the claims of business were stronger than the call of marital duty. Cecil had her own way, and spent the long July afternoons alone in the Brunswick-Square drawing-room, while her husband won fame and money abroad, and courted the laughter of hawbucks and clodhoppers in stifling provincial town-halls and courthouses.
But before Laurence O'Boyneville departed for his circuit-duties an event occurred which was to exercise an evil influence on Cecil's lonely reveries during those long summer days, those solitary evenings spent in the dim twilight of a dreary chamber.
Before winging her way to a Sussex manor-house, in which she was to begin her autumn round of visits, Mrs MacClaverhouse came to take a farewell dinner in Brunswick Square. Some unwonted trepidation, some touch of unusual tenderness in the dowager's manner, impressed Cecil in the first few moments of that lady's arrival; but on asking her aunt if any thing was amiss, any direct reply to her question was artfully evaded by the dowager, who became suddenly interested in the state of Mr. O'Boyneville's health.
Before Cecil could repeat her inquiry, the barrister made his appearance, accompanied by another legal celebrity, whose cheering presence often illumined the dulness of Brunswick Square. Mr. O'Boyneville welcomed the dowager with his accustomed cordiality, and made an especial descent to the cellar to procure a particular brand of sparkling Moselle for that lady's consumption. The two legal celebrities made some faint pretence of general conversation while the soup was on the table; but with the appearance of the fish plunged at once into a discussion of the numerous points, which bristled over the celebrated case of Blunderbuss against Saddlebags, lately decided in the Court of Exchequer; and then, by an easy transition, they floated into a debate upon the arguments of the respondent's counsel in that interesting appeal before the Lords-Justices. On ordinary occasions the dowager—who was always well posted in her Times—was apt to join in these legal disquisitions, and would give her opinion with sprightly intelligence and feminine decisiveness. But to-day Mrs. MacClaverhouse was evidently preoccupied. She allowed the gentlemen to express their sentiments without interruption or contradiction from her, and forgot to compliment Mr. O'Boyneville on the delicate aroma of his Moselle, or to whisper any little reproving speech to Cecil regarding the wasteful character of the banquet.
The dusk was deepening when the ladies went up stairs to the drawing-room; but when the barrister's inestimable man-of-all-work would have lighted the candles, Mrs. MacClaverhouse entreated that the operation might be postponed.
"I know you like mooning in the dark, Cecil," exclaimed the dowager, with some of her native sharpness, "and for once in a way I feel inclined for this half-light.—Come in half an hour, Pupkin; that will be plenty of time for the candles.—There's light enough for you to play to me, I suppose, Cecil?"
"Quite enough, dear aunt. Would you like me to play?"
"Yes, most decidedly. It's a treat to hear a decent piano after that old rattle-trap of mine. And your Broadwood is a magnificent instrument—something like a present from a husband. Ah, what a husband yours is, Cecil!" exclaimed the dowager, with sudden enthusiasm; "and I dare say you think no more of him than if he was one of those men with red-hot pokers and hob-nailed boots that one reads of in the police-reports."
"But, auntie, I am very grateful——"
"Grateful!" cried Mrs. MacClaverhouse, impatiently; "gratitude has nothing to do with it. I tell you, child, you are utterly incapable of appreciating Laurence O'Boyneville."
Cecil had seated herself at the piano by this time. Her fingers wandered absently over the keys, and her head was bent in a pensive attitude. Mrs. MacClaverhouse watched her niece sharply as she bent over the instrument. The slender figure draped in white looked very fragile and phantom-like in the dusk.
"What would you like me to play, auntie?" Cecil asked presently.
"Oh, let me have one of your favourite reveries: your 'Gondola,' or your 'Femme du Marin,' or your 'Source,' or some of that dreamy nonsense you are so fond of. Play something of Mendelssohn's, if you like—those doleful 'Songs without Words'—funeral dirges without the funeral, I should call them—which you were so fond of playing to Hector at Fortinbras."
Watching the frail white figure relentlessly athwart the dusk, Mrs. MacClaverhouse perceived a faint shiver disturb its repose as she said this. But in the next moment Cecil struck a few chords and began to play. Her aunt rose from the chair in which she had seated herself, and came nearer the piano.
Cecil's music to-night was of the softest and tenderest character. Her fingers glided over the keys in a dreamy legato movement, and as the dowager watched and listened, two actual tears arose in those sharp worldly eyes, and blotted the picture of the slender white-robed figure, and graceful drooping head.
While Cecil was lingering fondly over a piano passage, the dowager startled her by a profound sigh. Any thing in the way of sentiment was so foreign to the habits of Mrs. MacClaverhouse's mind that Cecil looked up from her piano in unmitigated surprise.
"Ah, by-the-bye," said the dowager, "talking of Hector Gordon, I had some news from India to-day."
"Indeed, auntie!"
The same faint shiver that had stirred the white-robed figure before stirred it again. There are some things that can never be forgotten.
"Yes, I had a letter viâ Marseilles. Of course, when people are wallowing in gold they have no occasion to think of sixpence more or less for postage. My letters have to go by Southampton. Bad news, of course, Cecil; who ever receives good news nowadays? I shall have to go into mourning; poor people's relations are always dying. I am really almost inclined to think they do it on purpose to involve one in the expense of mourning."
Cecil's heart gave a great leap, and then, seemed to stand still. The human heart has a faculty of transforming itself into a lump of ice at such moments.
"What do you mean?" she cried, with a vehemence that startled the dowager; "is Hector Gordon dead?"
She rose from before the piano, trembling from head to foot. Mrs. MacClaverhouse caught her niece in her arms.
"My darling!" she exclaimed,—and perhaps it was the first time in her life that the strong-minded matron had ever employed so tender an epithet,—"do you think I should talk so coolly about going into mourning for my boy?—who has been more than a son to me, bless his generous heart. Don't tremble so, Cecil; it is Hector's wife, poor young thing, who is dead."
"You—you frightened me, auntie," murmured Cecil, as she sank helplessly into the chair from which she had risen in her sudden terror. "You know how little Hector Gordon and I have ever been to each other—what utter strangers we are and must always be to one another now. But to be told all at once, that a person you have known and been familiar with is dead, the shock—the——"
The words died on her lips. The sudden terror that had taken possession of her had given place to a new fear. She was alarmed by the intensity of her own feelings.
"If he were really dead," she thought, "what right should I have to feel like that?"
She recovered herself with an effort, and after a brief pause addressed the agitated dowager very calmly.
"Tell me all about it, auntie," she said; "it is very shocking—so young—so happy."
In the moment after having said these words, a pang of envy shot through Cecil's heart. Ah, what an enviable fate it seemed, this destiny which commonplace people are so apt to bemoan! To have one brief year of perfect bliss, and then to die; to live the life of the roses and butterflies; to be indeed the favoured of the gods.
"It seems there was a baby," said Mrs. MacClaverhouse, "though I had not been told there was any thing of that sort expected; and of course, if the poor child had lived, they would have looked for their godmothers elsewhere. The infant was a son, and Hector was delighted, and every body else was delighted. But things took a bad turn; the baby died, and the poor young mother fretted, and then there came a fever, and in three weeks' time my poor boy was a widower. I have had no letter from him yet, but they tell me he is dreadfully broken-hearted."
"It is very dreadful for him," murmured Cecil.
"And worse for her, I should think, poor thing," said the matter-of-fact dowager.
"I tell you, my dear Sir, if Bamper goes in for specific performance of contract, the defendant hasn't a leg to stand on," said the sonorous voice of Mr. O'Boyneville, who entered the room at this moment in hot argument with his friend. "Good gracious me, Mrs. Mac.!" he exclaimed, on entering the dusky chamber, "how is it they have left you in the dark all this time?—Cecil, what have you been thinking of? Where's that fellow Pupkin?"
The valuable Pupkin appeared with lights at this moment. The barrister's powerful will vanquished his household as it conquered all other opponents. The man-of-all-work had entered his service ten years before, a rough and unkempt lad, with no ideas beyond blacking-brushes and a knifeboard, to become in due time the very pink and model of indoor domestics.
Pupkin placed a moderator-lamp on the centre table, and lighted candles on the cheffonier and mantelpiece. He brought the tea-equipage, and attended on his mistress while she poured out the tea. Mr. O'Boyneville relapsed into profound meditation, as it was his habit to do while taking tea. He was thinking fondly of the red bag which was waiting for him on the study-table below, and wishing that his brother luminary might be inspired to take his departure. But that gentleman was pleased to snatch an opportunity of making himself agreeable to his learned friend's aristocratic and elegant young wife, and was relating a facetious but strictly correct trial, which had convulsed one of the law-courts during the late term. Poor Cecil smiled faintly at the feeble witticisms, and tried her uttermost to be civil to her husband's guest. But she was very glad when Mr. O'Boyneville, after a protracted fit of staring, which was the next thing to epilepsy, started suddenly from his seat, and exclaimed:
"And now, my dear Sleghammer, I'll wish you good-night. I've got some very important papers to look through before I go to bed, and——"
"My dear Boyneville, don't use the least ceremony. I know how you work! and, bless my soul! it's past ten o'clock. But really I had spent such a delightful evening, that, upon my word, I——" murmured Mr. Sleghammer, looking at Lady Cecil, whose society he had enjoyed for about twenty minutes since dinner.
When Mr. O'Boyneville's guest had walked away in the summer night, and when Mr. O'Boyneville had gone to his nightly labours, the dowager embraced her niece very affectionately before taking her departure in the phantom chariot, which had been prowling slowly to and fro in the square for the last half hour, to the admiration of the boys of the district who associated the equipage vaguely with the Lord Mayor.
"What a dear creature your husband is!" cried the dowager; "and how entertaining it is to hear all the little secrets of the law-courts! You ought to be happy, Cecil; you ought indeed. But you girls don't know what real happiness is. And yet you ought to know the value of a good home, and a generous husband; for you have known what it is to be poor."
"Do you think that I do not appreciate my husband's goodness?" said Cecil earnestly. "Indeed—indeed, auntie——"
"Oh yes," answered the dowager promptly, "you appreciate his goodness perhaps; but you don't appreciate him. You just tolerate him because he is good and kind to you, and works like a galley-slave to insure your welfare in the future; but if he could read 'Victor Hugo' like a play-actor, and make an idiot of himself about Mendelssohn, you'd adore him."
This was the last Cecil saw of her aunt for some time, for on the morrow the dowager departed to the Sussex manor-house. Before the week was out Mr. O'Boyneville had also taken wing, and Cecil was quite alone in the big empty Brunswick Square mansion. She had been allowed to have her own way. She had escaped the weariness of a sea-side excursion—the familiar gaieties of country-house visiting. She was alone with her books and her music, as she had wished to be. She was alone, and she found the autumn days too long for her, the Bloomsbury mansion too big and empty.
Mr. O'Boyneville had no idea of being an inattentive husband. He sent his wife hasty lines scrawled on the flaps of envelopes in the intervals of his professional labours, and the hasty lines were full of kindness and anxiety for her welfare. But a couple of sentences written on the flap of an envelope are not calculated to "speak the soft intercourse from soul to soul;" and the barrister's brief scrawls afforded his wife very little food for reflection during her lonely hours. She wrote her husband long dutiful letters, two and three times a week; but she found this letter-writing rather a weary labour sometimes. What subjects were there on which she could be expansive? She took so little interest in his professional triumphs. He cared so little for her books and music. She shrank from putting her thoughts into words: but one conviction was slowly and surely taking root in her mind, and that conviction was that her marriage had been a mistake.
"He ought to have married some good comfortable creature, who would have found occupation enough in household duties," she thought sometimes. "I read too much, and think too much, until I begin to feel that there is something wanting in my life."
She had never dared to acknowledge to herself that the something wanting was a more genial companion than Laurence O'Boyneville.
"He is so good to me, and I ought to love him so dearly," she thought in those moments of self-reproach which came very often in her lonely days. "I know that he is good, and honourable, and clever; what more can I wish him to be? Surely I ought to be proud of such a husband when I remember the fate of other women. What would become of me if I had married such a man as Mr. Lobyer?"
There is a little story by Alfred de Musset, in which the heroine is married to a man whom she has passionately loved. She finds, too late, that there is little sympathy between them, and her life is very lonely. One night she is at the opera—alone, as she almost always is; and when the music, which she adores, fills her with uncontrollable emotion, she stretches out her hand involuntarily to clasp the sympathetic hand of a friend. The poor little hand falls upon the arm of an empty chair. The husband is no amateur of Mozart, and falls asleep on those rare occasions when he accompanies his wife to the opera.
There were times when Cecil felt a vague yearning for the touch of that sympathetic hand; there were times when a chilling sense of intellectual loneliness oppressed her spirits, and when she felt that it would have been better for her if the daily cares about plate and china, and all the little sordid duties of her Dorset-Square life, had still demanded her thought and attention.
Did she ever think of the young widower far away in his time of mourning? Did the picture of that which might have been arise more vividly before her vision now that the cold hand of death had loosened Hector Gordon's bondage? Alas! yes; struggle as she might against the tempter, there were times when she felt herself weak, and wicked; there were times when the face that had looked down upon her under the sunless autumn sky looked at her again out of the shadows of her lonely room, instinct with the same melancholy tenderness—the same passionate devotion.
"I ought to be content to remember that for one moment in my life I was loved like that," she thought. "I am as foolish as I am wicked when I let his image come back to me. What could I be to him if we met now, and I were as free as he is? Can I suppose that he remembers me, after all the domestic sweetness of his brief married life—after the terrible sorrow in which it has come to an end? Ah, no, thank God for that; the past has made a gulf between us which nothing in the present can bridge over. If we met to-morrow, we should meet as strangers. I can almost fancy the look of indifference I should see in his face."
If Cecil was a lonely wife, she was at least not a neglected or forgotten one. All things that can contribute to a woman's happiness—when considered from a prosaic and common-sense point of view—were freely furnished by Laurence O'Boyneville for the woman he had wooed so boldly and won so easily. A dainty little brougham, and a stout strong-built steed, had been provided for the barrister's wife. She had a coachman renowned for his sobriety, and she had no occasion to suffer the ignominy of opening her carriage-door, or the martyrdom involved in the dangerous attentions of street-boys; for the inestimable Pupkin accompanied her in her drives, and marshalled her solemnly to her chariot after her calls or shopping. She had unlimited supplies of new music, and first-class subscriptions at more than one library. She had carte blanche at Howell and James's, and had she chosen to be extravagant, might have indulged her folly to the uttermost. She had a well-appointed although somewhat dingily-furnished house, and servants who gave her very little trouble; and if amidst all this substantial commonplace comfort the sympathetic hand and the congenial companionship which make the lives of some few women happy were wanting, she had surely little right to complain. That perfect circle which is the emblem of eternity is not to be found embodied upon earth, and there is always some missing link in the golden chain of sublunary bliss.
When all the brightness of summer had vanished before the pelting rains and dull leaden skies of a stormy October, the barrister returned to his wife and his London engagements. She was really glad to welcome him back; even though he did seem a little bigger and louder, and more overpowering altogether, now that she had been separated from him for some months. Business of a special nature had kept him away from home after his circuit-work had been finished, and it was not till the middle of October that he was free to return. He came back to the old round of perpetual labour, and his work in the ensuing term threatened to be even heavier than usual; but he had time to see that his wife was looking pale and ill, and the discovery grieved and distressed him.
"I did wrong in letting you have your own way, Cecil," he said; "this autumn in London has done you harm. You are looking pale and ill. If you'll tell Pupkin to put a couple of shirts in my portmanteau, I'll take you down to Brighton to-morrow afternoon by the five o'clock express."
It was in vain that Cecil protested that there was no occasion for Mr. O'Boyneville to put himself out of the way on her account. The barrister insisted on the visit to Brighton; and on the following day, which was the last of the week, and the only one on which Mr. O'Boyneville could have turned his back upon the neighbourhood of the law-courts, Cecil found herself whirled seawards through the evening fog by the most delightful express-train in Christendom. The cool sea-breezes blew into her chamber at the Albion, and she saw the lights of the chain-pier burning brightly below her window as she arranged her hair before the glass. She found her husband comfortably established before a blazing fire in the sitting-room when she went down stairs; and in less than half an hour a little chef-d'œuvre in the way of dinners was served by the gravest and most attentive of waiters. After dinner Mr. O'Boyneville enjoyed his accustomed nap; while Cecil stood at the window, looking out at the moonlit sky and sea. Ah, who shall say what a treat the sea is after Brunswick Square—what refreshment to the eye in these big rolling waves—what music in the sonorous roar of the sea after the fifes and drums of the Foundling!
After tea Mr. O'Boyneville looked at his watch, and then rang for the waiter.
"I expect a parcel by the 9.45 train," he said. "Will you be good enough to inquire about it; and let me have a pair of candles on that table?"
The waiter bowed and departed. He returned in ten minutes, carrying a bundle, at which Cecil gazed wonderingly.
It was the barrister's crimson bag.
"My work follows me, you see, Cecil," said Mr. O'Boyneville. "I was anxious about to-night's letters and papers; so I told Jarvis to send the bag after me."
The attentive waiter placed candles on the side-table; and the great O'Boyneville seated himself before his papers. He worked indefatigably for the remainder of the evening. Cecil heard the stiff law-stationer's paper crackle as the barrister read his briefs, only pausing now and then to scrawl some note upon the margin, or to meditate profoundly, with a thoughtful scowl upon his face. She had no books with her; so she drew back the curtain from before the window that commanded the sea, and sat by it, looking out at the moonlit waves and the lamps of the cliff and pier; and but for the roaring of the sea and the moonlight on the waters, Brighton would have been as dull as Bloomsbury.
On Sunday afternoon Mr. O'Boyneville drove his wife up and down the cliff in the clear cold October weather. He recognised several of his brother luminaries, who were taking the air on the King's Road, all more or less thoughtful and preoccupied of aspect, and all meditating Smith versus Brown, or Jones versus Robinson, or some other cases in which their rhetorical abilities were to be displayed. The barrister entertained his wife by pointing out these distinguished individuals.
"Do you see that tall stout man, Cecil? No, not that one; the man nearest the lamp-post—the man who is blowing his nose? That's Bobbin, the great chancery-barrister—the man who——"
And then, when Cecil had confronted the east wind, and strained her eyes to the uttermost, and ultimately had gazed reverentially on the wrong person, Mr. O'Boyneville went on to sing the praises of Bobbin; and a quarter of an hour afterwards poor Cecil had to twist her head in all manner of unpleasant positions, in order to behold a man in grey trousers and a brown overcoat, who turned out to be no other than the mighty Valentine, but who in outward aspect differed in no essential way from other men.
Lady Cecil was not interested in Bobbin or Valentine. If Laurence O'Boyneville could have shown her Victor Hugo or Alfred Tennyson taking their constitutional on that pleasant sea-shore, she would have thought it no trouble to twist her head or strain her eyes in order to look upon them; though even then there is some probability that she would have been disappointed in the mortal habitations of those mighty souls. Was not Lavater disappointed in Goethe, and almost inclined to disbelieve that the handsome young stranger presented to him was indeed the author of Werter?
After the conventional drive up and down the King's Road, Mr. O'Boyneville took his wife into bleak solitudes beyond Rottendean. They drove between bare hills, through a bit of lonely country, where there were little homesteads scattered far apart, with lights twinkling feebly in the twilight—a lonely barren bit of country, whose atmosphere on an October afternoon has a soothing influence on the mind. The dim grey downs, and the sheep feeding high up in the clear air, seem so very far away from all London care and turmoil.
Both the barrister and his wife abandoned themselves to a contemplative mood during the long country drive; but after dinner they talked very pleasantly by the cheery fire, and Laurence forgot his red bag for once in a way, and became the man he had been during the brief holiday-time before his marriage—not very sentimental or metaphysical, but an agreeable companion nevertheless.
"I think the holiday has done us both good," he said to his wife, as an early express bore them away from Brighton on Monday morning. Mr. O'Boyneville had persuaded Cecil to stay a few days longer at the Albion, promising to return and fetch her; but she did not care to stay at Brighton alone, with neither books nor music.
"I wish we could oftener be away from Brunswick Square and your professional work, Laurence," she said, with her hand in her husband's big palm. She felt drawn nearer to him by that one day's holiday than by all the domestic routine of their Bloomsbury life.
"Ah, my dear, that isn't possible," said the barrister, with a sigh of resignation.
Had the great O'Boyneville's fate been in his own hands, would he have had his professional labour less, his leisure for home-duties and home-pleasures greater? Alas! it is very much to be feared that he would not have so chosen. He was but mortal man; and the triumphs of the law-courts, the compliments from the bench, and the "roars of laughter" reported in the newspapers, are very sweet to the forensic mind.
A fortnight after the Brighton excursion there came a letter from Flo—a letter the contents of which Mr. O'Boyneville, who was sufficiently inquisitive upon occasions, begged to hear. As Mrs. Lobyer's epistle, though intensely affectionate, was by no means confidential, Cecil complied with her husband's request. The letter announced Mr. and Mrs. Lobyer's return from the Continent, and establishment at Pevenshall; and the writer entreated her dearest Cecil, and her dearest Cecil's husband, if possible, to spend Christmas at that country mansion.
"You like Mrs. Lobyer, don't you, Cecil?" the barrister asked, when the perusal of the letter was finished.
"Oh yes, I like her very much indeed."
"Then why shouldn't you accept her invitation?"
"But can you go, Laurence?"
"Well, I rather fear not. I might run down for Christmas-day perhaps, and a few days after, while the courts are up; but that would all depend upon circumstances. In any case you ought to go, Cecil; the change of air and scene will do you good: you've not been looking well since my return from circuit."
There was some discussion. Cecil did not care for gaiety; Cecil did not wish to leave her husband at Christmas time; but the barrister's strong will triumphed.
"I let you have your own way in the summer, and I found you looking as pale as a ghost when I came home. You must let me have my way this time, Cecil," he said decisively.
So it was decided that Lady Cecil should accept Mrs. Lobyer's invitation, and should go to Pevenshall on the fifteenth of December, where Mr. O'Boyneville would join her, if possible, during the Christmas week.
A few days before she left Brunswick Square Cecil received a voluminous epistle from the dowager, who retailed all the gossip of the house in which she was staying for her niece's amusement, and furnished the barrister's wife with a brief chronicle of births, deaths, and marriages, pending or otherwise.
The letter was written closely on two sheets of paper, both crossed, and in an obscure corner Cecil found a postscript.
"I have heard from Hector Gordon. His regiment is ordered home, and he comes with it. Indeed, for all I know, he is in England at this moment."
"He is as far away from me in England as he was in India," Cecil thought, as she folded the missive. "My aunt must know that he and I would never wish to meet, and hers is the only house in which I should be likely to see him."
She showed Mr. O'Boyneville her aunt's letter; and even the obscure little postscript did not escape the searching eye of the barrister. He asked who the Hector Gordon was who was expected home; and Cecil had to explain her aunt's relationship to the Plunger captain, and to tell the story of the young man's marriage and widowhood, for her husband's edification.