Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon

by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

  Here among the old gnarled trunks, and on the hillocky grass Mr Treverton and the two young ladies walked for about half an hour, enjoying the beauty and freshness of the place, in this sweetest period of the balmy spring day. Celia talked much, and John Treverton talked a little, but Miss Malcolm was for the most part silent. And yet John did not think her dull or stupid. It was enough for him to look at that delicate, yet firmly-modelled profile, the thoughtful brow, grave lips, and calm dark eyes, to know that neither intellect nor goodness was wanting in her whom his kinsman had designed for his wife.

  ‘Poor old man!’ he thought, ‘he meant to secure my happiness without jeopardising hers. If he could have known — if he could have known!’

  They returned to the garden by a different arch; they visited the hot-houses, where the rose-hued azalias and camelias made pyramids of vivid colour; they glanced at the kitchen garden with its asparagus beds and narrow box-edged borders, its all-pervading odour of sweet herbs and wallflowers.

  ‘I am positively expiring for want of a cup of tea,’ cried Celia. ‘Didn’t you hear the church clock strike five, Laura?’

  John remembered the six o’clock dinner at The Laurels.

  ‘I really think I must deny myself that cup of tea,’ he said. ‘The Sampsons dine at six.’

  ‘What of that?’ exclaimed Celia, who never would let a man out of her clutches till stern necessity snatched him from her. ‘It is not above ten minute’ walk from here to The Laurels.’

  ‘What an excellent walker you must be, Miss Clare. Well, I’ll hazard everything for that cup of tea.’

  They went into a pretty room, opening out of the garden, a room with two long windows wreathed round with passion-flower and starry white clematis — the clematis montana, which flowers in spring. It was not large enough for a library, so it was called the book-room, and was lined from floor to ceiling with books — a great many of which had been collected by Laura. It was quite a lady’s collection. There were all the modern poets, from Scott and Byron downwards, a good many French and German books — Macaulay, De Quincey, Lamartine, Victor Hugo — a good deal of history and belles-lettres, but no politics, no science, no travels, The room was the essence of snugness — flowers on mantelpiece and tables, basket-work easy chairs, cushions adorned with crewel-work, delightful little tables (after Chippendale), and on one of the tables a scarlet Japanese tea-tray, with the quaintest of old silver teapots, and cups and saucers in willow pattern Nankin ware. Laura poured out the tea, while Celia began to devour hot buttered cake, the very look of which suggested dyspepsia; but to some weak minds earth has no more overpowering temptation on a warm spring afternoon than hot-buttered cake and strong tea with plenty of cream in it.

  John Treverton sat in one of the low basket arm chairs — such chairs as they make in Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire — and drank tea as if it were the elixir of life. He had a strange feeling as he sat in that chair by the open window, looking across the beds of tulips, above which the bees were humming noisily — a feeling as if his life were only just beginning; as if he were a child in his cradle, dimly conscious of the dawning of existence; no burdens on mind or conscience; no tie or encumbrance; no engagement of honour or faith; a dead blank behind him; and before him life, happiness, the glory and freshness of earth, love, home, all things which fate reserves for the man born to good luck.

  This dream or fancy of his was so pleasant that he let it stay with him while he drank three cups of tea, and while Celia rattled on about Hazlehurst and its inhabitants, giving him what she called a social map of the country, which might be useful for his guidance during the week he proposed to spend there. He only roused himself when the church clock chimed the three-quarters, and then he pulled himself out of the basket chair with a jerk, put down his cup and saucer, and wished Laura good-bye.

  ‘I shall have to do the distance in ten minutes, Miss Clare,’ he said, as he shook hands with that vivacious young lady.

  ‘I’m afraid I ought to have said ten minutes for a bicycle,’ replied Celia, ‘but the Sampsons won’t mind waiting dinner for you, and I don’t suppose the delay will hurt their dinner.’

  ‘It will be nearer for you through the orchard,’ said Laura.

  So John Treverton went through the orchard, at the end of which there was a gate that opened into a lane leading to the high road. It was the same lane which skirted the walled fruit garden, with the little door that John had seen mysteriously opened that winter night. The sight of the little wooden door made him curiously thoughtful.

  ‘I’ll never believe that there was anything approaching guilt in that mystery,’ he said to himself. ‘No, I have looked into those lovely eyes of hers, and I believe her incapable of an unworthy thought. Some poor relation, I daresay — a scamp whom she would have been ashamed of before the servants, so she received him secretly; doubtless, to help him with money.

  * * * * * * *

  ‘What an extraordinary girl you are, Laura,’ said Celia, draining the teapot. ‘Why did you never tell me that John Treverton was so perfectly lovely?’

  ‘My dear Celia, how am I to know what constitutes your idea of perfect loveliness in a young man? I have heard you praise so many, all distinctly different. I told you that Mr. Treverton was gentlemanlike and good-looking.’

  ‘Good-looking,’ cried Celia, ‘he is absolutely perfect. To see him sitting in that chair drinking tea and looking dreamily out of the garden with those exquisite eyes of his! Oh, he is quite too awfully nice. Do you know the colour of his eyes?’

  ‘I have not the slightest idea.’

  ‘They are a greeny-grey — a colour that changes every minute, a tint between blue and brown; I never saw it before. And his complexion — just that olive paleness which is so positively delightful. His nose is slightly irregular in line, not straight enough to be Grecian, and not curved enough to be aquiline — but his mouth is awfully nice — so firm and resolute-looking, yet lapsing now and then into dreamy thought. Did you see him lapse into dreamy thought, Laura?’

  Miss Malcolm blushed indignantly; vexed, no doubt, at such foolishness.

  ‘Really, Celia, you are too ridiculous. I can’t think how you can indulge in such absurd raptures about a strange man.’

  ‘Why not about a strange man?’ asked Celia with her philosophical air. ‘Why should the perfections of a strange man be a forbidden subject? One may rave about a landscape; one may be as enthusiastic as one likes about the stars or the moon, the sea, or a sunset, or even the last popular novel! Why must not one admire a man? I am not going to put a padlock upon my lips to flatter such an absurd prejudice. As for you, Laura, it is all very well to sit there stitching at that faded blackberry leaf — you are putting too much brown in it I am sure — and looking the image of all that is demure. To my mind you are more to be envied than any girl I ever heard of, except the Sleeping Beauty in the Wood.’

  ‘Why should I be envied?’

  ‘Because you are to have a splendid fortune, and John Treverton for your husband.’

  ‘Celia, I shall be so grateful to you if you will be quite silent on that subject, supposing that you can be silent about anything.’

  ‘I can’t,’ said Celia, frankly.

  ‘It is by no means certain that I shall many Mr. Treverton.’

  ‘Would you be so utterly idiotic as to refuse him?’

  ‘I would not accept him unless I could believe that he really liked me — better than any other woman he had ever seen.’

  ‘And, of course he will; of course he does,’ cried Celia. ‘You know, as a matter of personal inclination, I would much rather you should marry poor Edward, who adores the ground you walk upon, and, of course, adores you much more than the ground. But there is a limpness about Ted’s character which makes me fear that he will never get on in the world. He is a clever young man, and he thinks that he has nothing to do but go on being clever, and write verses for the magazines — which even I, as his sister, must confess are th
e weakest dilution of Swinburne — and that Fame will come and take him by the hand, and lead him up the steps of her temple, while Fortune will meet him in the portico with a big bag of gold. No, Laura, dearly as I love Ted, I should be sorry to see you sacrifice a splendid fortune, and refuse such a man as John Treverton.’

  ‘There will be time enough to debate the question when Mr. Treverton asks me to marry him,’ said Laura, gravely.

  ‘Oh, that will come upon you all in a moment,’ retorted Celia, ‘when you won’t have me to help you. You had better make up your mind beforehand.’

  ‘I should despise Mr. Treverton if he were to make me an offer before he knew a great deal more of me than he does now. But I forbid you to talk any more of this, Celia. And now we had better go and walk in the orchard for half an hour or you will never be able to digest all the cake you have eaten.’

  ‘What a pity digestion should be so difficult, when eating is so easy,’ said Celia.

  And then she went dancing along the garden paths with the airy lightness of a nymph, who had never known the meaning of indigestion.

  Once more John Treverton drove round his late kinsman’s estate, and this second time, in the sweet spring weather, the farms and homesteads, the meadows where the buttercups were beginning to show golden among the grass, the broad sweeps of arable land where the young corn was growing tall — seemed to him a hundredfold more fair than they had seemed in the winter. He felt a keener longing to be the master of all these things. It seemed to him as if no life could be so sweet as the life he might lead at Hazlehurst Manor, with Laura Malcolm for his wife.

  The life he might leaf —— if ——

  What was that ‘if’ which barred the way to perfect bliss?

  There was more than one obstacle, he told himself gloomily, as he paced the elm avenue on the London-road, one evening at sunset, after he had been at Hazlehurst more than a week, during which week he had seen Laura very often.

  There was, among many questions, the doubt as to Laura’s liking for him. She might consider herself, constrained to accept him, were he to offer himself, in deference to the wish of her adopted father; but could he ever feel sure that she really cared for him, that he was the one man upon earth whom she would choose for her husband?

  A flattering whisper which crept into the ear of his mind, like a caressing breath of summer wind gently fanning his cheek, told him that he was already something nearer and dearer to this sweet girl than the ruck of mankind; that her lovely hazel eyes took a new light and colour at his coming, that their beauty was shadowed with sadness in the moment of parting from him; that there were tender broken tones of voice, fleeting blushes, half smiles, sudden droopings of darkly-fringed eyelids, and many other more subtle signs, that told of something more than common friendship. Believing this, what had he to do but snatch the prize.

  Alas, between him and the light and glory of life stood a dark forbidding figure, a veiled face, an arm sternly extended to stop the way.

  ‘It is not to be thought of, ‘he said to himself. ‘I honour her too much — yes, I love her too well. The estate must go, and she and I must go on our several ways in the wilderness of life — to meet by chance, perhaps, half a century hence, when we have grown old, and hardly remember each other.’

  It was to be his last evening at Hazlehurst, and he was going to the Manor-house to bid Laura and her friend good-bye. A very simple act of politeness, assuredly, yet he hung back from the performance of it, and walked slowly up and down under the elm trees, smoking a meditative cigar, and chewing the cud of fancies which were mostly bitter.

  At last, just when the topmost edge of the sinking sun dropped below the dark line of distant woods, John Treverton made up his mind there was no more time to be lost, if he meant to call at the Manor-house that evening. He quickened his pace, anxious to find Laura in the garden, where she spent most of her life in this balmy spring weather. He felt himself more at ease with her in the garden than when he was brought face to face with her within four walls. Out of doors there was always something to distract attention, to give a sudden turn to the conversation if it became embarrassing to either of them. Here, too, it was easier to escape Celia’s searching eye, which was so often upon them indoors, where she had very little to occupy her attention.

  He went in at the lodge gate, as usual unquestioned. All the old servants agreed in regarding him as the future owner of the estate. They wondered that he asserted himself so little, and went in and out as if he were nobody. The way to the old Dutch garden was by this time very familiar to him. He had been there at almost every hour of the day, from golden noon to grey evening.

  As he went round by the house he heard voices, a man’s voice among them, and the sound of that masculine voice was not welcome to his ear. Celia’s shrill little laugh rang out merrily, the sky-terrier yapped in sympathy. They were evidently enjoying themselves very much in the Dutch garden, and John Treverton felt as if their enjoyment were an affront to him.

  He turned the angle of the house, and saw the group seated on a little lawn in front of the book-room windows; Laura and Celia in rustic chairs, a young man on the grass at their feet, the dog dancing round him. John Treverton guessed at once that the young man was the Edward, or Ted, about whom he had heard Celia Clare so often discourse; the Edward Clare who, according to Miss Sampson, was in love with Laura Malcolm.

  Laura half rose to shake hands with her guest. Her face at least was grave. She had not been laughing at the nonsense which provoked Celia’s mirth. John Treverton was glad of that.

  ‘Mr. Clare, Mr. Treverton.’

  Edward Clare looked up and nodded — a rather supercilious nod John thought, but he did not expect much friendliness from the Vicar’s son. He gave the young man a grave bow, and remained standing by Laura’s chair.

  ‘I hope you will forgive my late visit, Miss Malcolm,’ he said. ‘I have come to wish you “good-bye.”’

  She glanced up at him with a startled look, and he fancied — yes, he dared to fancy — that she was sorry.

  ‘You have not stopped long at Hazlehurst,’ she said, after a palpable pause.

  ‘As if anyone would who was not absolutely obliged,’ cried Celia. ‘I can’t imagine how Mr. Treverton has existed through an entire week.’

  ‘I assure you that I have not found my existence a burden,’ said John, addressing himself to Celia. ‘I shall leave Hazlehurst with deep regret.’

  He could not for worlds, in his present mood, have said as much to Laura.

  ‘Then you must be one of two things,’ said Celia.

  ‘What things?’

  ‘You must be either a poet, or intensely in love. There is my brother here. He never seems tired of roaming about Hazlehurst. But then he is a poet, and writes verses about March violets, and the first leafbuds on the willows, and the reappearance of the May-fly, or the return of the swallow. And he smokes no end, and he reads novels to an extent that is absolutely demoralising. It’s dreadful to see a man dependent upon Mudie for getting through his life,’ exclaimed Celia, making a face that expressed extreme contempt.

  ‘I am not a poet, Miss Clare,’ said John Treverton, quietly; ‘yet I confess to having been very happy at Hazlehurst.’

  He stole a glance at Laura to see if the shot told. She was looking down, her sweet, grave face pure and pale as ivory in the clear evening light.

  ‘It’s very civil of you towards the parish to say as much,’ said Edward with a veiled sneer, ‘and it is kind of you to shrink from wounding our feelings as aborigines, but I am sure you must have been ineffably bored. There is positively nothing to do at Hazlehurst.’

  ‘I suppose that’s why the place suits you, Ted?’ observed Miss Clare, innocently.

  The conversation had an uncomfortable tone which was quite out of harmony with the soft evening sky, and shadowy garden, where the flowers were losing their colour as the light declined. John Treverton looked curiously at the man he knew to be his rival. />
  He saw a man of about six-and-twenty, of the middle height, slim almost to fragility, yet with a compactness of form which indicated activity and possibly strength. Grey eyes inclining to blue, long lashes, delicately pencilled eyebrows, a fair, complexion, low narrow brow, and regular features, a pale brown moustache, more silky than abundant, made up a face that was very handsome in the estimation of some people, but which assuredly erred on the side of effeminacy. It was a face that would have suited the velvet and brocade of one of the French Henry’s minions, or the lovelocks and jewel-broidered doublet of one of James Stuart’s silken favourites.

  It would have been difficult to imagine the owner of that face doing any good or great work in the world, or leaving any mark upon his time, save some petty episode of vanity, profligacy, and selfishness in the memoirs of a modern St. Simon.

  ‘Anything new in the evening papers?’ asked Mr. Clare, with a stifled yawn.

  The languid enquiry followed upon a silence that had lasted rather too long to be pleasant.

  ‘Sampson had not got his Globe when I left him,’ answered John Treverton; ‘but in the present stagnation of everything at home and abroad I confess to feeling very little interest in the evening papers.’

  ‘I should like to have heard if that unlucky dancer is dead,’ said Celia.

  John Treverton, who had been standing beside Laura’s chair like a man lost in a waking dream, turned suddenly at this remark.

  ‘What dancer?’ he asked.

  ‘La Chicot. Of course you have seen her dance. You happy Londoners see everything under the sun that is worth seeing. She is something wonderful, is she not? And now I suppose I shall never see her.’

  ‘She’s a very handsome woman, and a very fine dancer, in her particular style,’ answered Treverton. ‘But what did you mean just now when you talked about her death. She is as much alive as you and I are, at least I know that her name was on all the walls and she was dancing nightly when I left London.’