CHAPTER VII.
ARCADIAN RED BRICK, LILAC, AND LABURNUM.
AS time proceeds, renewal and decay, its twin principles of mutation,are everywhere and necessarily active, applying to the moral as wellas to the material world. Affections displace and succeed one another.The most beautiful are often the first to die. Characteristics intheir beginning, minute and unsubstantial as the fairy brood thatpeople the woodland air, enlarge and materialize till they usurp thedominion of the whole man, and the people and the world are changed.
Sir Booth Fanshawe is away at Paris just now, engaged in a greatnegotiation, which is to bring order out of chaos, and inform him atlast what he is really worth _per annum_. Margaret and her cousin,Miss Sheckleton, have revisited England; their Norman retreat isuntenanted for the present.
With the sorrow of a great concealment upon her, with other sorrowsthat she does not tell, Margaret looks sad and pale.
In a small old suburban house, that stands alone, with a ruralaffectation, on a little patch of shorn grass, embowered in lilacs andlaburnums, and built of a deep vermillion brick, the residence ofthese ladies is established.
It is a summer evening, and a beautiful little boy, more than a yearold, is sprawling, and babbling, and rolling, and laughing on thegrass upon his back. Margaret, seated on the grass beside him,prattles and laughs with him, and rolls him about, delighted, andadoring her little idol.
Old Anne Sheckleton, sitting on the bench, smiling happily, under thewindow, which is clustered round with roses, contributes her quota ofnonsense to the prattle.
In the midst of this comes a ring at the bell in the jessamine-coveredwall, and a tidy little maid runs out to the green door, opens it, andin steps Cleve Verney.
Margaret is on her feet in a moment, with the light of a differentlove, something of the old romance, in the glad surprise, "Oh,darling, it is you!" and her arms are about his neck, and he stoopsand kisses her fondly, and in his face for a moment, is reflected theglory of that delighted smile.
"Yes, darling. Are you better?"
"Oh, yes--ever so much; I'm always well when you are here; and look,see our poor little darling."
"So he is."
"We have had such fun with him--haven't we, Anne? I'm sure he'll be solike you."
"Is this in his favour, cousin Anne?" asked Cleve, taking the oldlady's hand.
"Why should it not?" said she gaily.
"A question--well, I take the benefit of the doubt," laughed Cleve."No, darling," he said to Margaret, "you mustn't sit on the grass; itis damp; you'll sit beside our Cousin Anne, and be prudent."
So he instead sat down on the grass, and talked with them, andprattled and romped with the baby by turns, until the nurse came outto convey him to the nursery, and he was handed round to say whatpasses for "Good night," and give his tiny paw to each in turn.
"You look tired, Cleve, darling."
"So I am, my Guido; can we have a cup of tea?"
"Oh, yes. I'll get it in a moment," said active Anne Sheckleton.
"It's too bad disturbing you," said Cleve.
"No trouble in the world," said Anne, who wished to allow them a wordtogether; "besides, I must kiss baby in his bed."
"Yes, darling, I _am_ tired," said Cleve, taking his place beside her,so soon as old Anne Sheckleton was gone. "That old man"----
"Lord Verney, do you mean?"
"Yes; he has begun plaguing me again."
"What is it about, darling?"
"Oh, fifty things; he thinks, among others, I ought to marry," saidCleve, with a dreary laugh.
"Oh, I thought he had given up that," she said, with a smile that wasvery pale.
"So he did for a time; but I think he's possessed. If he happens totake up an idea that's likely to annoy other people, he never lets itdrop till he teases them half to death. He thinks I should marry_money_ and political connection, and I don't know what all, and I'mquite tired of the whole thing. What a vulgar little box thisis--isn't it, darling? I almost wish you were back again in that placein France."
"But I can see you so much oftener here, Cleve," pleaded Margaret,softly, with a very sad look.
"And where's the good of seeing me here, dear Margaret? Just consider,I always come to you anxious; there's always a risk, besides, ofdiscovery."
"Where you are is to me a paradise."
"Oh, darling, do _not_ talk rubbish. This vulgar, odious littleplace! No place can be _either_--_quite_, of course--where _you_ are.But you must see what it is--a paradise"--and he laughedpeevishly--"of red brick, and lilacs, and laburnums--a paradise forold Mr. Dowlas, the tallow-chandler."
There was a little tremor in Margaret's lip, and the water stood inher large eyes; her hand was, as it were, on the coffin-edge; she waslooking in the face of a dead romance.
"Now, you really must not shed tears over _that_ speech. You are toomuch given to weeping, Margaret. What have I said to vex you? Itmerely amounts to this, that we live just now in the future; we can'twell deny _that_, darling. But the time will come at last, and myqueen enjoy her own."
And so saying he kissed her, and told her to be a good little girl;and from the window Miss Sheckleton handed them tea, and then she ranup to the nursery.
"You _do_ look very tired, Cleve," said Margaret, looking into hisanxious face.
"I _am_ tired, darling," he said, with just a degree of impatience inhis tone; "I said so--horribly tired."
"I wish so much you were liberated from that weary House of Commons."
"Now, my wise little woman is talking of what she doesn'tunderstand--not the least; besides, what would you have me turn to? Ishould be totally without resource and pursuit--don't you see? We mustbe reasonable. No, it is not that in the least that tires me, but I'mreally overwhelmed with anxieties, and worried by my uncle, who wantsme to marry, and thinks I can marry whom I please--that's all."
"I sometimes think, Cleve, I've spoiled your fortunes," with a greatsigh, said Margaret, watching his face.
"Now, where's the good of saying that, my little woman? I'm onlytalking of my uncle's teasing me, and wishing he'd let us both alone."
Here came a little pause.
"Is that the baby?" said Margaret, raising her head and listening.
"I don't hear our baby or any one else's," said Cleve.
"I fancied I heard it cry, but it wasn't."
"You must think of me more, and of that child less, darling--you must,indeed," said Cleve, a little sourly.
I think the poor heart was pleased, thinking this jealousy; but I fearit was rather a splenetic impulse of selfishness, and that the babywas, in his eyes, a bore pretty often.
"Does the House sit to-night, Cleve, darling?"
"Does it, indeed? Why it's sitting now. We are to have the secondreading of the West India Bill on to-night, and I must bethere--yes--in an hour"--he was glancing at his watch--"and heavenknows at what hour in the morning we shall get away."
And just at this moment old Anne Sheckleton joined them. "She's comingwith more tea," she said, as the maid emerged with a little tray, "andwe'll place our cups on the window-stone when we don't want them. Now,Mr. Verney, is not this a charming little spot just at this light?"
"I almost think it is," said Cleve, relenting. The golden light ofevening was touching the formal poplars, and the other trees, andbringing out the wrinkles of the old bricks duskily in its flamingglow.
"Yes, just for about fifteen minutes in the twenty-four hours, whenthe weather is particularly favourable, it _has_ a sort of Dutchpicturesqueness; but, on the whole, it is not the sort of cottage thatI would choose for a permanent dove-cot. I should fear lest my pigeonsshould choke with dust."
"No, there's no dust here; it is the quietest, most sylvan little lanein the world."
"Which is a wide place," said Cleve. "Well, with smoke then."
"Nor smoke either."
"But I forgot, love does not die of smoke or of anything else," saidCleve.
"No, of course, love i
s eternal," said Margaret.
"Just so; the King never dies. Les roix meurent-ils? Quelquefois,madame. Alas, theory and fact conflict. Love is eternal in theabstract; but nothing is more mortal than a particular love," saidCleve.
"If you think so, I wonder you ever wished to marry," said Margaret,and a faint tinge flushed her cheeks.
"I thought so, and yet I did wish to marry," said Cleve. "It isperishable, but I can't live without it," and he patted her cheek, andlaughed a rather cold little laugh.
"No, love never dies," said Margaret, with a gleam of her old fiercespirit. "But it may be killed."
"It is terrible to kill anything," said Cleve.
"To kill love," she answered, "is the worst murder of all."
"A veritable murder," he acquiesced, with a smile and a slight shrug;"once killed, it never revives."
"You like talking awfully, as if I might lose your love," said she,haughtily; "as if, were I to vex you, you never could forgive."
"Forgiveness has nothing to do with it, my poor little woman. I nomore called my love into being than I did myself; and should it die,either naturally or violently, I could no more call it to life, than Icould Cleopatra or Napoleon Bonaparte. It is a principle, don't yousee? that comes as direct as life from heaven. We can't create it, wecan't restore it; and really about love, it is worse than mortal,because, as I said, I am sure it has _no_ resurrection--no, it has noresurrection."
"That seems to me a reason," she said, fixing her large eyes upon himwith a wild resentment, "why you should cherish it _very_ much whileit lives."
"And _don't_ I, darling?" he said, placing his arms round her neck,and drawing her fondly to his breast, and in the thrill of thatmomentary effusion was something of the old feeling when to lose herwould have been despair, to gain her heaven, and it seemed as if thescent of the woods of Malory, and of the soft sea breeze, was aroundthem for a moment.
And now he is gone, away to that tiresome House--lost to her, given upto his ambition, which seems more and more to absorb him; and sheremains smiling on their beautiful little baby, with a great misgivingat her heart, to see Cleve no more for four-and-twenty hours more.
As Cleve went into the House, he met old Colonel Thongs, sometime whipof the "outs."
"You've heard about old Snowdon?"
"No."
"In the Cabinet, by Jove!"
"Really?"
"Fact. Ask your uncle."
"By Jove, it _is_ very unlooked for; no one thought of him; but I daresay he'll do very well."
"We'll soon try that."
It _was_ a _very_ odd appointment. But Lord Snowdon was gazetted; adull man, but laborious; a man who had held minor offices at differentperiods of his life, and was presumed to have a competent knowledge ofaffairs. A dull man, owing all to his dulness, quite below many, andselected as a negative compromise for the vacant seat in the Cabinet,for which two zealous and brilliant competitors were contending.
"I see it all," thought Cleve; "that's the reason why Caroline Oldysand Lady Wimbledon are to be at Ware this autumn, and I'm to bemarried to the niece of a Cabinet minister."
Cleve sneered, but he felt very uneasy.
The Tenants of Malory, Volume 3 Page 7
