Milly Darrell
Page 6
prettily decorated with flowers and with some verycurious old silver.
There was a good deal of talk at dinner, in which I could take verylittle part. Mr. and Mrs. Darrell talked to Julian Stormont of theirtravels; and I must confess the lady talked well, with no affectationof enthusiasm, and with an evident knowledge and appreciation of thethings she was speaking about. I envied her those wanderings in sunnyforeign lands, even though they had been made in the company of aninvalid dowager, and I wondered whether she would be happy in a settledexistence at Thornleigh.
After dinner Milly took me out upon the terrace, and from thence wewent to explore the gardens. We had not been out long before JulianStormont came to join us. We had been talking pleasantly enough till heappeared, but his coming seemed to make us both silent, and he himselfhad a thoughtful air. I watched his pale face as he walked beside us inthe twilight, and was again struck by the careworn look about the browand the resolute expression of the mouth.
He was very fond of Milly. Of that fact there could be no possibledoubt; and I think he had already begun to suffer keenly from theknowledge that his love was unreturned. That he hoped against hope atthis time--that he counted fully on his power to win her in the future,I know. He was too wise to precipitate matters by any untimely avowalof his feelings. He waited with a quiet resolute patience which was apart of his nature.
Of course we talked a little, but it was in a straggling, desultorykind of way; and I think it was a relief to all of us when we finishedthe round of the gardens and went in through one of the drawing-roomwindows. The room was lighted with lamps and candles placed about uponthe tables, and Mrs. Darrell was sitting near her husband, employedupon some airy scrap of fancy-work, while he read his _Times_.
He asked for some music soon after we went in, and she rose to obey himwith a very charming air of submission. She played magnificently, witha power and style that were quite new to me, for I had heard noprofessional performers. She sang an Italian scena afterwards, in arich mezzo-soprano, and with a kind of suppressed passion thatimpressed me deeply. I scarcely wondered, after hearing her play andsing, that Mr. Darrell had been fascinated by her. These gifts of herswere in themselves sufficient to subjugate a man who really cared formusic.
Milly was charmed into forgetfulness of her prejudices. She went overto the piano and kissed her stepmother.
'Papa told me how clever you were,' she said; 'but he did not tell meyou were a genius.'
Mrs. Darrell received the compliment very modestly, and then tried topersuade Milly to sing or play; but the girl declined resolutely.Nothing could induce her to touch the piano after that brilliantperformance.
The next day and several days passed very quietly, and in a kind ofmonotonous comfort. The rector of the parish dined with us one day, andon another a neighbouring squire with his wife and three daughters.Milly and I spent a good deal of our time in the gardens and on thesea-shore, with Julian Stormont for our companion, while Mr. and Mrs.Darrell rode or drove together. My darling could see that she was notexpected to join them in these rides and drives, and I think thisconfirmed her idea that her father was in a manner lost to her.
'I must try to be satisfied with this new state of things, Mary,' shesaid, with a sigh of resignation. 'If my father is happy, I ought to becontented. But O, my dear, if you could have seen us together a yearago, you would know how much I have lost.'
I had been at Thornleigh a little more than a week, when Mr. Darrellone morning proposed a drive to a place called Cumber Priory, which wasone of the show-houses of the neighbourhood. It was a very old place,he said, and had been one of the earliest monastic settlements in thatpart of the country. Milly and her father and her cousin had been therea great many times, and the visit was proposed for the gratification ofMrs. Darrell and myself.
She assented graciously, as she always did to every proposition of herhusband's, and we started soon after breakfast in the barouche, withJulian Stormont on horseback. The drive was delightful; for, afterleaving the hilly district about Thornleigh, our road lay through awood, where the trees were of many hundred years' growth. I recognisedgroups of oak and beech that I had seen among the sketches in Milly'sportfolio.
On the other side of the wood we came to some dilapidated-lookinggates, with massive stone escutcheons on the great square pillars.There was a lodge, but it was evidently unoccupied, and Mr. Darrell'sfootman got down from the box to open the gates. Within we made thecircuit of a neglected lawn, divided from a park by a sunk fence,across which some cattle stared at us in a lazy manner as we drove pastthem. The house was a long low building with heavily mullioned windows,and was flanked by gothic towers. Most of the windows had closedshutters, and the place had altogether a deserted look.
'The Priory has not been occupied for several years,' Mr. Darrell said,as if in answer to my thoughts as I looked up at the closed windows.'The family have been too poor to live in it in anything like their oldstate. There is only one member of the old family remaining now, and heleads a wandering kind of life abroad, I believe.'
'What has made them so poor?' asked Mrs. Darrell.
'Extravagant habits, I suppose,' answered her husband, with anexpressive shrug of the shoulders. 'The Egertons have always been awild race.'
'Egerton!' Mrs. Darrell repeated; 'I thought the name of these peoplewas Cumber.'
'No; Cumber is only the name of the place. It has been in the Egertonfamily for centuries.'
'Indeed!'
I was seated exactly opposite her, and I was surprised by the strangestartled look in her face as she repeated the name of Egerton. Thatlook passed away in the next moment, and left her with her usual air oflanguid indifference; a placid kind of listlessness which harmonisedvery well with her pale complexion and delicate features. She was not awoman from whom one expected much animation.
The low iron-studded door of the Priory was opened by a decent-lookingold woman of that species which seems created expressly for the showingof old houses. She divined our errand at once, and as soon as we werein the hall, began her catalogue of pictures and curiosities in theusual mechanical way, while we looked about us, always fixing our eyeson the wrong object, and more bewildered than enlightened by herdescription of the chief features of the place.
We went from room to room, the dame throwing open the shutters of thedeep-set gothic windows, and letting in a flood of sunshine upon thefaded tapestries and tarnished picture-frames. It was a noble oldplace, and the look of decay upon everything was more in accord withits grandeur than any modern splendour could have been.
We had been through all the rooms on the ground floor, most of whichopened into one another, and were returning towards the hall, when Mr.Darrell missed his wife, and sent me back to look for her in onedirection, while he went in another. I hurried through three or fourempty rooms, until I came to a small one at the end of the house, andhere I found her. I had not noticed this room much, for it wasfurnished in a more modern style than the rest of the house, and theold housekeeper had made very light of it, hurrying us back to look atsome armour over the chimneypiece in the next room. It was her master'sstudy, she had said, and was not generally shown to strangers.
It was a small dark-looking room, lined with dingily-bound books uponheavy carved-oak shelves, and with no other furniture than a massivewriting-table and three or four arm-chairs. Over the mantelpiece, whichwas modern and low, there was a portrait of a young man with a darkhandsome face, and it was at this that Augusta Darrell was looking. Icould see her face in profile as she stood upon the hearth with herclenched hand upon the mantelpiece, and I had never before seen such anexpression in any human countenance.
What was it? Despair, remorse, regret? I know not; but it was a look ofkeenest anguish, of unutterable sorrow. The face was deadly pale, thegreat gray eyes looking upwards at the portrait, the lips lockedtogether rigidly.
She did not hear my footstep; it was only when I spoke to her that sheturned towards me with a stony face, and asked what I wanted.
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br /> I told her that Mr. Darrell had sent me.
'I was coming this instant,' she said, resuming her usual manner withan effort. 'I had only loitered to look at that portrait. A fine face,is it not, Miss Crofton?'
'A handsome one, at any rate,' I answered doubtfully, for that darkhaughty countenance struck me as rather repellent than attractive.
'That's as much as to say you don't think it a good face. Well, perhapsyou are right. It reminded me of some one I knew a long time ago, andwas rather interesting to me on that account. And then I fell into akind of a reverie, and forgot that my dear husband might miss me.'
He came into the room as she was saying this. She told him that she hadstopped to look at the portrait, and asked whose it was.
'It is a likeness of Angus Egerton, the present owner of the Priory,'Mr. Darrell answered; 'and a very good likeness,