Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon

by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

  Thus it was that Mr. Lansdell accepted the Chiltern Hundreds, and turned his back upon a country in which he had never been especially happy. He had plenty of friends upon the Continent; and being rich, handsome, and accomplished, was fêted and caressed wherever he went. He was very much admired, and he might have been beloved; but that first disappointment had done its fatal work, and he did not believe that there was in all the world any such thing as pure and disinterested affection for a young man with a landed estate and fifteen thousand a year.

  So he lounged and dawdled away his time in drawing-rooms and boudoirs, on moonlit balconies, in shadowy orange-groves, beside the rippling Arno, in the colonnades of Venice, on the Parisian boulevards, under the lime-trees of Berlin, in any region where there was life and colour and gaiety, and the brightness of beautiful faces, and where a man of a naturally gloomy temperament might forget himself and be amused. He started with the intention of doing no harm; but with no better guiding principle than the intention to be harmless, a man can contrive to do a good deal of mischief.

  Mr. Lansdell’s life abroad was neither a good nor a useful one. It was an artificial kind of existence, with spurious pleasures, spurious brilliancy, — a life whose brightest moments but poorly compensated for the dismal reaction that followed them. And in the meanwhile Lady Gwendoline did not become Marchioness of Heatherland; for, only a month before the day appointed for the wedding, young Lord Heatherland broke his neck in an Irish steeple-chase.

  It was a terrible and bitter disappointment; but Lady Gwendoline showed her high breeding and her philosophy at the same time. She retired from the world in which her career had been hitherto so brilliantly successful, and bore her sorrow in silence. She, too, had played her best card, and had lost; and now that the Marquis was dead, and Rowland Lansdell far away, people began to say that the lady had jilted her cousin, and that the loss of her titled lover was Heaven’s special judgment upon her iniquity, — though why poor Lord Heatherland should be sacrificed to Lady Gwendoline Pomphrey’s sin is rather a puzzling question.

  It may be that Lord Ruysdale’s daughter hoped her cousin would return when he heard of the Marquis’s death. She knew that Roland had loved her: and what was more likely than that he should come back to her, now that he knew she was once more free to be his wife? Lady Gwendoline kept the secrets of her own heart, and no one knew which of her two lovers had been dearest to her. She kept her own secrets; and, by-and-by, when she reappeared in the world, people saw that her beauty had suffered very little from her sorrow for her disappointment.

  She was still very handsome, but her prestige was gone. Impertinent young débutantes of eighteen called this splendid creature of four-and-twenty “quite old.” Wasn’t she engaged to a Mr. Lansdell ever so long ago, and then to the Marquis of Heatherland? Poor thing, how very sad! They wondered she did not go over to Rome, or join Miss Sellon’s sisterhood, or something of that kind. Lady Gwendoline’s portrait still held its place in books of beauty, and she could see herself smiling in West-end printshops, with a preternaturally high forehead, and very long ringlets; but she felt that she was old — very old. Gossipping dowagers talked aristocratic scandal openly before her, and said, “We don’t mind your hearing it, Gwendoline dear, for of course you know the world, and that such things do happen;” and a woman has seen the last of her youth when people say that sort of thing to her.

  She felt that she was very old. She had led a high-pressure kind of existence, in which a year stands for a decade; and now in her lonely old age she discovered that her father was very poor, and that his estates were mortgaged, and that henceforth her existence must be a wretched hand-to-mouth business, unless some distant relation, from whom Lord Ruysdale had expectations, would be good enough to die.

  The distant relation had died within the last twelve months, and the fortune inherited from him, though by no means a large one, had set the Earl’s affairs tolerably straight; so he had returned to Lowlands, after selling the lease and furniture of his town-house. It was absurd to keep the town-house any longer for the sake of Gwendoline, who was two-and-thirty years of age, and never likely to marry. Lord Ruysdale argued. So he had paid his debts, and had released his estate from some of its many incumbrances, and had come back to the home of his boyhood, to set up as a model farmer and country gentleman.

  So, in the bright July sunshine, Gwendoline and her cousin lounged upon the lawn, and talked of old pleasures and old acquaintances, and the things that happened to them when they were young. If the lady ever cherished any hope that Roland would return to his allegiance, that hope has now utterly vanished. He has forgiven her for all the past, and they are friends and first-cousins again; but there is no room for hope that they can ever be again what they have been. A man who can forgive so generously must have long ceased to love: that strange madness, so nearly allied to hatred, and jealousy, and rage, and despair, has no kindred with forgiveness. Lady Gwendoline knew that her chance was gone. She knew this; and there was a secret bitterness in her heart when she thought of it, and she was jealous of her cousin’s regard, and exacting in her manner to him. He bore it all with imperturbable good temper. He had been hot-headed and fiery-tempered long ago, when he was young and chivalrous, and eager to be useful to his fellow-creatures; but now he was only a languid loiterer upon the earth, and his creed was the creed of the renowned American who has declared that “there is nothing new, and nothing true; and it don’t signify.”

  What did it matter? The crooked sticks would never be straight: that which was wanting would never be numbered. Roland Lansdell suffered from a milder form of that disease in a wild paroxysm of which Swift wrote “Gulliver,” and Byron horrified society with “Don Juan.” He suffered from that moody desperation of mind which came upon Hamlet after his mother’s wedding, and neither man nor woman delighted him.

  But do not suppose that this young man gave himself melancholy or Byronic airs upon the strength of the aching void at his own weary heart. He was a sensible young man; and he did not pose himself à la Lara, or turn down his collars, or let his beard grow. He only took life very easily, and was specially indulgent to the follies and vices of people from whom he expected so very little.

  He had gone back to Midlandshire because he was tired of his Continental wanderings; and now he was tired of Mordred already, before he had been back a week. Lady Gwendoline catechised him rather closely as to what he had done with himself upon the previous afternoon; and he told her very frankly that he had strolled into Hurstonleigh Grove to see Mr. Raymond, and had spent an hour or two talking with his old friend, while Mr. and Mrs. Gilbert and the children enjoyed themselves, and prepared a rustic tea, which would have been something like Watteau, if Watteau had been a Dutchman.

  “It was very pretty, Gwendoline, I assure you,” he said. “Mrs. Gilbert made tea, and we drank it in a scalding state; and the two children were all of a greasy radiance with bread-and-butter. The doctor seems to be an excellent fellow; his moral region is something tremendous, Raymond tells me, and he entertained us at tea with a most interesting case of fester.”

  “Oh, the doctor? that’s Mr. Gilbert, is it not?” said Lady Gwendoline; “and what do you think of his wife, Roland? You must have formed some opinion upon that subject, I should think, by the manner in which you stared at her.”

  “Did I stare at her?” cried Mr. Lansdell, with supreme carelessness. “I dare say I did; I always stare at pretty women. Why should a man go into all manner of stereotyped raptures about a Raffaelle or a Guido, and yet feel no honest thrill of disinterested admiration when he looks at a picture fresh from the hands of the supreme painter, Nature? who, by the way, makes as many failures, and is as often out of drawing, as any other artist. Yes, I admire Mrs. Gilbert, and I like to look at her. I don’t suppose she’s any better than other people, but she’s a great deal prettier. A beautiful piece of animated waxwork, with a little machinery inside, just enough to make her say, ‘Yes, if you please,’ and
‘No, thank you.’ A lovely non-entity with yellow-black eyes. Did you observe her eyes?”

  “No!” Lady Gwendoline answered, sharply; “I observed nothing except that she was a very dowdy-looking person. What, in Heaven’s name, is Mr. Raymond’s motive for taking her up? He’s always taking up some extraordinary person.”

  “But Mrs. Gilbert is not an extraordinary person: she’s very stupid and commonplace. She was nursery-maid, or nursery-governess, or something of that kind, to that dear good Raymond’s penniless nieces.”

  There was no more said about Mr. and Mrs. Gilbert. Lady Gwendoline did not care to talk about these common people, who came across her dull pathway, and robbed her of some few accidental rays of that light which was now the only radiance upon earth for her, — the light of her cousin’s presence.

  Ah, me! with what a stealthy step, invisible in the early sunshine, pitiless Nemesis creeps after us, and glides past us, and goes on before to wait for us upon the other side of the hill, amidst the storm-clouds and the darkness! From the very first Gwendoline had loved her cousin Roland better than any other living creature upon this earth: but the chance of bringing down the bird at whose glorious plumage so many a fair fowler had levelled her rifle had dazzled and tempted her. The true wine of life was not that mawkish, sickly-sweet compound of rose-leaves and honey called Love, but an effervescing, intoxicating beverage known as Success, Lady Gwendoline thought: and in the triumph of her splendid conquest it seemed such an easy thing to resign the man she loved. But now it was all different. She looked back, and remembered what her life might have been: she looked forward, and saw what it was to be: and the face of Nemesis was very terrible to look upon.

  Thus it was that Lady Gwendoline was exacting of her cousin’s attention, impatient of his neglect. Oh, if she could have brought him back! if she could have kindled a new flame in the cold embers! Alas! she knew that to do that would be to achieve the impossible. She looked in the glass, and saw that her aristocratic beauty was pale and faded; she felt that the story of her life was ended. The sea might break against the crags for ever and for ever; but the tender grace of a day that was dead could never return to her.

  “He loved me once,” she thought, as she sat in the summer twilight, watching her cousin strolling on the lawn, smoking his after-dinner cigar, and looking so tired — so tired of himself and everything in the world. “He loved me once; it is something to remember that.”

  The day was very dull at Lowlands, Mr. Lansdell thought. There was a handsome house, a little old and faded, but very handsome notwithstanding; and there was a well-cooked dinner, and good wines; and there was an elegant and accomplished woman always ready to talk to him and amuse him; — and yet, somehow, it was all flat, stale, and unprofitable to this young man, who had lived the same kind of life for ten years, and had drained its pleasures to the very dregs.

  “We should laugh at a man who went on writing epic poems all his life, though people refused to read a line of his poetry; and no man can be expected to go on trying to improve the position of people who don’t want to be improved. I’ve tried my hand at the working-man, and he has rejected me as an intrusive nuisance. I’ve no doubt he was ‘in his right.’ How should I like a reformer who wanted to set me straight, and lay out my leisure hours by line and rule, and spend my money for me, and show me how to get mild Turkish, and German wines, in the best and cheapest market?”

  Mr. Lansdell often thought about his life. It is not natural that a man, originally well disposed, should lead a bad and useless life without thinking of it. Mr. Lansdell was subject to gloomy fits of melancholy, in which the Present seemed a burden, and the Future a blank, — a great blank desert, or a long dreary bridge, like that which the genius showed to Mirza in his morning vision, with dreadful pitfalls every here and there, down which unwary foot-passengers sank, engulfed in the dreadful blackness of a bottomless ocean.

  * * *

  CHAPTER XIV.

  UNDER LORD THURSTON’S OAK.

  While Mr. Lansdell remembered Isabel Gilbert as a pretty automaton, who had simpered and blushed when he spoke to her, and stammered shyly when she was called upon to answer him, the Doctor’s Wife walked up and down the flat commonplace garden at Graybridge-on-the-Wayverne, and thought of her birthday afternoon, whose simple pleasures had been embellished by the presence of a demigod. Yes, she walked up and down between two rows of straggling gooseberry-bushes, in a rapturous day-dream; a dangerous day-dream, in which Roland Lansdell’s dark face shone dazzling and beautiful. Was it wrong to think of him? She never asked herself that question. She had read sentimental books all her life, and had been passionately in love with heroes in three volumes, ever since she could remember. What did it matter whether she was in love with Sir Reginald Glanville or Mr. Roland Lansdell? One passion was as hopeless as the other, and as harmless therefore. She was never likely to see the lord of Mordred Priory again. Had she not heard him tell Mr. Raymond that he should spend the winter in Paris? Mrs. Gilbert counted the months upon her fingers. Was November the winter? If so, Mr. Lansdell would be gone in four months’ time. And in all those four months what likelihood was there that she should see him, — she, who was such a low degraded wretch as compared with this splendid being and those with whom it was his right to associate? Never, no, never until now had she understood the utter hideousness and horror of her life. The square miserable parlour, with little stunted cupboards on each side of the fireplace, and shells and peacocks’ feathers, and penny-bottles of ink, and dingy unpaid bills, upon the mantel-piece. She sat there with the July sun glaring in upon her through the yellow-white blind; she sat there and thought of her life and its squalid ugliness, and then thought of Lady Gwendoline at Lowlands, and rebelled against the unkindness of a Providence that had not made her an earl’s daughter. And then she clasped her hands upon her face, and shut out the vulgar misery of that odious parlour — a parlour! — the very word was unknown in those bright regions of which she was always dreaming — and thought of Roland Lansdell.

  She thought of him, and she thought what her life might have been — if ——

  If what? If any one out of a hundred different visions, all equally childish and impossible, could have been realized. If she had been an earl’s daughter, like Lady Gwendoline! If she had been a great actress, and Roland Lansdell had seen her and fallen in love with her from a stage-box! If he had met her in the Walworth Road two or three years ago; she fancied the meeting, — he in a cab, with the reins lightly held between the tips of his gloved fingers, and a tiny tiger swinging behind; and she standing on the kerbstone waiting to cross the road, and not out to fetch anything vulgar, only going to pay a water-rate, or to negotiate some mysterious “backing” of the spoons, or some such young-ladylike errand. And then she got up and went to the looking-glass to see if she really was pretty; or if her face, as she saw it in her day-dreams, was only an invention of her own, like the scenery and the dresses of those foolish dreams. She rested her elbows on the mantel-piece, and looked at herself, and pushed her hair about, and experimented with her mouth and eyes, and tried to look like Edith Dombey in the grand Carker scene, and acted the scene in a whisper.

  No, she wasn’t a bit like Edith Dombey; she was more like Juliet, or Desdemona. She lowered her eyelids, and then lifted them slowly, revealing a tender penetrating glance in the golden black eyes.

  “I’m very sorry that you are not well!”

  she whispered. Yes, she would do for Desdemona. Oh, if instead of marrying George Gilbert, she had only run away to London, and gone straight to that enterprising manager, who would have been so sure to engage her! If she had done this, she might have played Desdemona, and Mr. Lansdell might have happened to go to the theatre, and might have fallen desperately in love with her on the spot.

  She took a dingy volume of the immortal William’s from a dusty row of books on one of the cupboards, and went up to her room and locked the door, and pleaded for Cassio, and wept and protested
opposite the looking-glass, before which three matter-of-fact generations of Gilberts had shaved themselves.

  She was only nineteen, and she was a child, with all a child’s eagerness for something bright and happy. It seemed only a very short time since she had longed for a gaily-dressed doll that adorned one of the Walworth Road shop-windows. Her married life had not as yet invested her with any matronly dignity. She had no domestic cares or duties; for the simple household was kept in order by Mrs. Jeffson, who would have resented any interference from the young mistress. Isabel went into the kitchen sometimes, when she was very much at a loss as to what she should do with herself, and sat in an old rocking-chair swinging languidly backwards and forwards, and watching kind-hearted Tilly making a pie.

  There are some young women who take kindly to a simple domestic life, and have a natural genius for pies and puddings, and cutting and contriving, in a cheery, pleasant way, that invests poverty with a grace of its own; and when a gentleman wishes to marry on three hundred a year, he should look out for one of those bright household fairies. Isabel had no liking for these things; to her the making of pastry was a wearisome business. It was all very well for Ruth Pinch to do it for once in a way, and to be admired by John Westlock, and marry a rich and handsome young husband offhand. No doubt Miss Pinch knew instinctively that Mr. Westlock would come that morning while the beef-steak pudding was in progress. But to go on making puddings for Tom Pinch for ever and ever, with no John Westlock! Isabel left the house affairs to Mrs. Jeffson, and acted Shakespearian heroines and Edith Dombey before her looking-glass, and read her novels, and dreamed her dreams, and wrote little scraps of poetry, and drew pen-and-ink profile portraits of Mr. Lansdell — always looking from right to left. She gave him very black eyes with white blanks in the centre, and streaky hair; she drew Lady Gwendoline and the chip bonnet also very often, if not quite as often as the gentleman; so there was no harm in it. Mrs. Gilbert was strictly punctilious with herself, even in the matter of her thoughts. She only thought of what might have happened if Mr. Lansdell had met her long ago before her marriage.