Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon

by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

  Paul Marchmont was not this sort of man. He was a hypocrite when it was essential to his own safety to practice hypocrisy; but he did not accept life as a drama, in which he was for ever to be acting a part. Life would scarcely be worth the having to any man upon such terms. It is all very well to wear heavy plate armour, and a casque that weighs fourteen pounds or so, when we go into the thick of the fight. But to wear the armour always, to live in it, to sleep in it, to carry the ponderous protection about us for ever and ever! Safety would be too dear if purchased by such a sacrifice of all personal ease. Paul Marchmont, therefore, being a selfish and self–indulgent man, only wore his armour of hypocrisy occasionally, and when it was vitally necessary for his preservation. He had imposed upon himself a penance, and acted a part in holding back for a year from the enjoyment of a splendid fortune; and he had made this one great sacrifice in order to give the lie to Edward Arundel’s vague accusations, which might have had an awkward effect upon the minds of other people, had the artist grasped too eagerly at his missing cousin’s wealth. Paul Marchmont had made this sacrifice; but he did not intend to act a part all his life. He meant to enjoy himself, and to get the fullest possible benefit out of his good fortune. He meant to do this; and upon the 17th of October he made no effort to restrain his spirits, but laughed and talked joyously with whoever came in his way, winning golden opinions from all sorts of men; for happiness is contagious, and everybody likes happy people.

  Forty years of poverty is a long apprenticeship to the very hardest of masters,––an apprenticeship calculated to give the keenest possible zest to newly–acquired wealth. Paul Marchmont rejoiced in his wealth with an almost delirious sense of delight. It was his at last. At last! He had waited, and waited patiently; and at last, while his powers of enjoyment were still in their zenith, it had come. How often he had dreamed of this; how often he had dreamed of that which was to take place to–morrow! How often in his dreams he had seen the stone–built mansion, and heard the voices of the crowd doing him honour. He had felt all the pride and delight of possession, to awake suddenly in the midst of his triumph, and gnash his teeth at the remembrance of his poverty. And now the poverty was a thing to be dreamt about, and the wealth was his. He had always been a good son and a kind brother; and his mother and sister were to arrive upon the eve of his installation, and were to witness his triumph. The rooms that had been altered were those chosen by Paul for his mother and maiden sister, and the new furniture had been ordered for their comfort. It was one of his many pleasures upon this day to inspect these apartments, to see that all his directions had been faithfully carried out, and to speculate upon the effect which these spacious and luxurious chambers would have upon the minds of Mrs. Marchmont and her daughter, newly come from shabby lodgings in Charlotte Street.

  “My poor mother!” thought the artist, as he looked round the pretty sitting–room. This sitting–room opened into a noble bedchamber, beyond which there was a dressing–room. “My poor mother!” he thought; “she has suffered a long time, and she has been patient. She has never ceased to believe in me; and she will see now that there was some reason for that belief. I told her long ago, when our fortunes were at the lowest ebb, when I was painting landscapes for the furniture–brokers at a pound a–piece,––I told her I was meant for something better than a tradesman’s hack; and I have proved it––I have proved it.”

  He walked about the room, arranging the furniture with his own hands; walking a few paces backwards now and then to contemplate such and such an effect from an artistic point of view; flinging the rich stuff of the curtains into graceful folds; admiring and examining everything, always with a smile on his face. He seemed thoroughly happy. If he had done any wrong; if by any act of treachery he had hastened Mary Arundel’s death, no recollection of that foul work arose in his breast to disturb the pleasant current of his thoughts. Selfish and self–indulgent, only attached to those who were necessary to his own happiness, his thoughts rarely wandered beyond the narrow circle of his own cares or his own pleasures. He was thoroughly selfish. He could have sat at a Lord Mayor’s feast with a famine–stricken population clamouring at the door of the banquet–chamber. He believed in himself as his mother and sister had believed; and he considered that he had a right to be happy and prosperous, whosoever suffered sorrow or adversity.

  Upon this 17th of October Olivia Marchmont sat in the little study looking out upon the quadrangle, while the household was busied with the preparations for the festival of the following day. She was to remain at Marchmont Towers as a guest of the new master of the mansion. She would be protected from all scandal, Paul had said, by the presence of his mother and sister. She could retain the apartments she had been accustomed to occupy; she could pursue her old mode of life. He himself was not likely to be very much at the Towers. He was going to travel and to enjoy life now that he was a rich man.

  These were the arguments which Mr. Marchmont used when openly discussing the widow’s residence in his house. But in a private conversation between Olivia and himself he had only said a very few words upon the subject.

  “You must remain,” he said; and Olivia submitted, obeying him with a sullen indifference that was almost like the mechanical submission of an irresponsible being.

  John Marchmont’s widow seemed entirely under the dominion of the new master of the Towers. It was as if the stormy passions which had arisen out of a slighted love had worn out this woman’s mind, and had left her helpless to stand against the force of Paul Marchmont’s keen and vigorous intellect. A remarkable change had come over Olivia’s character. A dull apathy had succeeded that fiery energy of soul which had enfeebled and well–nigh worn out her body. There were no outbursts of passion now. She bore the miserable monotony of her life uncomplainingly. Day after day, week after week, month after month, idle and apathetic, she sat in her lonely room, or wandered slowly in the grounds about the Towers. She very rarely went beyond those grounds. She was seldom seen now in her old pew at Kemberling Church; and when her father went to her and remonstrated with her for her non–attendance, she told him sullenly that she was too ill to go. She was ill. George Weston attended her constantly; but he found it very difficult to administer to such a sickness as hers, and he could only shake his head despondently when he felt her feeble pulse, or listened to the slow beating of her heart. Sometimes she would shut herself up in her room for a month at a time, and see no one but her faithful servant Barbara, and Mr. Weston––whom, in her utter indifference, she seemed to regard as a kind of domestic animal, whose going or coming were alike unimportant.

  This stolid, silent Barbara waited upon her mistress with untiring patience. She bore with every change of Olivia’s gloomy temper; she was a perpetual shield and protection to her. Even upon this day of preparation and disorder Mrs. Simmons kept guard over the passage leading to the study, and took care that no one intruded upon her mistress. At about four o’clock all Paul Marchmont’s orders had been given, and the new master of the house dined for the first time by himself at the head of the long carved–oak dining–table, waited upon in solemn state by the old butler. His mother and sister were to arrive by a train that would reach Swampington at ten o’clock, and one of the carriages from the Towers was to meet them at the station. The artist had leisure in the meantime for any other business he might have to transact.

  He ate his dinner slowly, thinking deeply all the time. He did not stop to drink any wine after dinner; but, as soon as the cloth was removed, rose from the table, and went straight to Olivia’s room.

  “I am going down to the painting–room,” he said. “Will you come there presently? I want very much to say a few words to you.”

  Olivia was sitting near the window, with her hands lying idle in her lap. She rarely opened a book now, rarely wrote a letter, or occupied herself in any manner. She scarcely raised her eyes as she answered him.

  “Yes,” she said; “I will come.”

  “Don’t be long, then. It wil
l be dark very soon. I am not going down there to paint; I am going to fetch a landscape that I want to hang in my mother’s room, and to say a few words about––”

  He closed the door without stopping to finish the sentence, and went out into the quadrangle.

  Ten minutes afterwards Olivia Marchmont rose, and taking a heavy woollen shawl from a chair near her, wrapped it loosely about her head and shoulders.

  “I am his slave and his prisoner,” she muttered to herself. “I must do as he bids me.”

  A cold wind was blowing in the quadrangle, and the stone pavement was wet with a drizzling rain. The sun had just gone down, and the dull autumn sky was darkening. The fallen leaves in the wood were sodden with damp, and rotted slowly on the swampy ground.

  Olivia took her way mechanically along the narrow pathway leading to the river. Half–way between Marchmont Towers and the boat–house she came suddenly upon the figure of a man walking towards her through the dusk. This man was Edward Arundel.

  The two cousins had not met since the March evening upon which Edward had gone to seek the widow in Paul Marchmont’s painting–room. Olivia’s pale face grew whiter as she recognised the soldier.

  “I was coming to the house to speak to you, Mrs. Marchmont,” Edward said sternly. “I am lucky in meeting you here, for I don’t want any one to overhear what I’ve got to say.”

  He had turned in the direction in which Olivia had been walking; but she made a dead stop, and stood looking at him.

  “You were going to the boat–house,” he said. “I will go there with you.”

  She looked at him for a moment, as if doubtful what to do, and then said,

  “Very well. You can say what you have to say to me, and then leave me. There is no sympathy between us, there is no regard between us; we are only antagonists.”

  “I hope not, Olivia. I hope there is some spark of regard still, in spite of all. I separate you in my own mind from Paul Marchmont. I pity you; for I believe you to be his tool.”

  “Is this what you have to say to me?”

  “No; I came here, as your kinsman, to ask you what you mean to do now that Paul Marchmont has taken possession of the Towers?”

  “I mean to stay there.”

  “In spite of the gossip that your remaining will give rise to amongst these country–people!”

  “In spite of everything. Mr. Marchmont wishes me to stay. It suits me to stay. What does it matter what people say of me? What do I care for any one’s opinion––now?”

  “Olivia,” cried the young man, “are you mad?”

  “Perhaps I am,” she answered, coldly.

  “Why is it that you shut yourself from the sympathy of those who have a right to care for you? What is the mystery of your life?”

  His cousin laughed bitterly.

  “Would you like to know, Edward Arundel?” she said. “You shall know, perhaps, some day. You have despised me all my life; you will despise me more then.”

  They had reached Paul Marchmont’s painting–room by this time. Olivia opened the door and walked in, followed by Edward. Paul was not there. There was a picture covered with green–baize upon the easel, and the artist’s hat stood upon the table amidst the litter of brushes and palettes; but the room was empty. The door at the top of the stone steps leading to the pavilion was ajar.

  “Have you anything more to say to me?” Olivia asked, turning upon her cousin as if she would have demanded why he had followed her.

  “Only this: I want to know your determination; whether you will be advised by me––and by your father,––I saw my uncle Hubert this morning, and his opinion exactly coincides with mine,––or whether you mean obstinately to take your own course in defiance of everybody?”

  “I do,” Olivia answered. “I shall take my own course. I defy everybody. I have not been gifted with the power of winning people’s affection. Other women possess that power, and trifle with it, and turn it to bad account. I have prayed, Edward Arundel,––yes, I have prayed upon my knees to the God who made me, that He would give me some poor measure of that gift which Nature has lavished upon other women; but He would not hear me, He would not hear me! I was not made to be loved. Why, then, should I make myself a slave for the sake of winning people’s esteem? If they have despised me, I can despise them.”

  “Who has despised you, Olivia?” Edward asked, perplexed by his cousin’s manner.

  “YOU HAVE!” she cried, with flashing eyes; “you have! From first to last––from first to last!” She turned away from him impatiently. “Go,” she said; “why should we keep up a mockery of friendliness and cousinship? We are nothing to each other.”

  Edward walked towards the door; but he paused upon the threshold, with his hat in his hand, undecided as to what he ought to do.

  As he stood thus, perplexed and irresolute, a cry, the feeble cry of a child, sounded within the pavilion.

  The young man started, and looked at his cousin. Even in the dusk he could see that her face had suddenly grown livid.

  “There is a child in that place,” he said pointing to the door at the top of the steps.

  The cry was repeated as he spoke,––the low, complaining wail of a child. There was no other voice to be heard,––no mother’s voice soothing a helpless little one. The cry of the child was followed by a dead silence.

  “There is a child in that pavilion,” Edward Arundel repeated.

  “There is,” Olivia answered.

  “Whose child?”

  “What does it matter to you?”

  “Whose child?”

  “I cannot tell you, Edward Arundel.”

  The soldier strode towards the steps, but before he could reach them, Olivia flung herself across his pathway.

  “I will see whose child is hidden in that place,” he said. “Scandalous things have been said of you, Olivia. I will know the reason of your visits to this place.”

  She clung about his knees, and hindered him from moving; half kneeling, half crouching on the lowest of the stone steps, she blocked his pathway, and prevented him from reaching the door of the pavilion. It had been ajar a few minutes ago; it was shut now. But Edward had not noticed this.

  “No, no, no!” shrieked Olivia; “you shall trample me to death before you enter that place. You shall walk over my corpse before you cross that threshold.”

  The young man struggled with her for a few moments; then he suddenly flung her from him; not violently, but with a contemptuous gesture.

  “You are a wicked woman, Olivia Marchmont,” he said; “and it matters very little to me what you do, or what becomes of you. I know now the secret of the mystery between you and Paul Marchmont. I can guess your motive for perpetually haunting this place.”

  He left the solitary building by the river, and walked slowly back through the wood.

  His mind––predisposed to think ill of Olivia by the dark rumours he had heard through his servant, and which had had a certain amount of influence upon him, as all scandals have, however baseless––could imagine only one solution to the mystery of a child’s presence in the lonely building by the river. Outraged and indignant at the discovery he had made, he turned his back upon Marchmont Towers.

  “I will stay in this hateful place no longer,” he thought, as he went back to his solitary home; “but before I leave Lincolnshire the whole county shall know what I think of Paul Marchmont.”

  VOLUME III.

  CHAPTER I. CAPTAIN ARUNDEL’S REVENGE.

  Edward Arundel went back to his lonely home with a settled purpose in his mind. He would leave Lincolnshire,––and immediately. He had no motive for remaining. It may be, indeed, that he had a strong motive for going away from the neighbourhood of Lawford Grange. There was a lurking danger in the close vicinage of that pleasant, old–fashioned country mansion, and the bright band of blue–eyed damsels who inhabited there.

  “I will turn my back upon Lincolnshire for ever,” Edward Arundel said to himself once more, upon his way
homeward through the October twilight; “but before I go, the whole country shall know what I think of Paul Marchmont.”

  He clenched his fists and ground his teeth involuntarily as he thought this.

  It was quite dark when he let himself in at the old–fashioned half–glass door that led into his humble sitting–room at Kemberling Retreat. He looked round the little chamber, which had been furnished forty years before by the proprietor of the cottage, and had served for one tenant after another, until it seemed as if the spindle–legged chairs and tables had grown attenuated and shadowy by much service. He looked at the simple room, lighted by a bright fire and a pair of wax–candles in antique silver candlesticks. The red firelight flickered and trembled upon the painted roses on the walls, on the obsolete engravings in clumsy frames of imitation–ebony and tarnished gilt. A silver tea–service and a Sèvres china cup and saucer, which Mrs. Arundel had sent to the cottage for her son’s use, stood upon the small oval table: and a brown setter, a favourite of the young man’s, lay upon the hearth–rug, with his chin upon his outstretched paws, blinking at the blaze.

  As Mr. Arundel lingered in the doorway, looking at these things, an image rose before him, as vivid and distinct as any apparition of Professor Pepper’s manufacture; and he thought of what that commonplace cottage–chamber might have been if his young wife had lived. He could fancy her bending over the low silver teapot,––the sprawling inartistic teapot, that stood upon quaint knobs like gouty feet, and had been long ago banished from the Dangerfield breakfast–table as utterly rococo and ridiculous. He conjured up the dear dead face, with faint blushes flickering amidst its lily pallor, and soft hazel eyes looking up at him through the misty steam of the tea–table, innocent and virginal as the eyes of that mythic nymph who was wont to appear to the old Roman king. How happy she would have been! How willing to give up fortune and station, and to have lived for ever and ever in that queer old cottage, ministering to him and loving him!