Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon

by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

‘Miss Rylance will sing, I hope,’ she said, politely. Miss Wendover came over to make the same request, and Urania sang the last fashionable ballad, ‘Blind Man’s Holiday,’ in a hard chilly voice which was as unpleasant as a voice well could be without being actually out of tune.

  After this Bessie sang ‘Darby and Joan,’ in a sweet contralto, but with a doleful slowness which hung heavily upon the spirits of the company, and a duly dismal effect having been produced, the young ladies were cordially thanked for — leaving off.

  A pair of whist-tables were now started for the elders, while the three girls and the two Oxonians still clustered round the piano, and seemed to find plenty to talk about till sweetly and suddenly upon the still night air came the silver tones of the church bells.

  Miss Wendover started up from the card-table with a solemn look, as the curate opened a window and let in a flood of sound. A silent hush fell upon everyone.

  ‘The New Year is born,’ said Aunt Betsy; ‘may it spare us those we love, and end as peacefully for us as the year that is just dead.’

  And then they all shook hands with each other and parted.

  The dance at The Knoll was a success, and Ida danced with the best men in the room, and was as much courted and admired as if she had been the greatest heiress in that part of Hampshire. Urania Rylance went simpering about the room telling everybody, in the kindest way, who Miss Palliser was, and how she had been an ill-used drudge at a suburban finishing school, before that dear good Miss Wendover took her as a useful companion; but even that crushing phrase, ‘useful companion,’ did not degrade Ida in the eyes of her admirers.

  ‘Palliser’s a good name,’ said one youth. ‘There’s a Sir Vernon

  Palliser — knew him and his brother at Cambridge — members of the Alpine

  Club — great athletes. Any relation?’

  ‘Very distant, I should think, from what I know of Miss Palliser’s circumstances;’ answered Miss Rylance, with an incredulous sneer.

  But Urania failed in making youth and beauty contemptible, and was fain to admit to herself that Ida Palliser was the belle of the room. Dr. Rylance, who had not been invited, but who looked so well and so young that no one could be angry with him for coming, hung upon Miss Palliser’s steps, and tortured her with his politeness.

  For Ida the festivity was not all happiness. She would have been happier at the Homestead, sitting by the fire reading aloud to Miss Wendover — happier almost anywhere — for she had not only to endure a kind of gentlemanly persecution from Dr. Rylance, but she was tormented by an ever-present dread of Brian Walford’s appearance. Bessie had sent him a telegram only that morning, imploring him, as a personal favour, to be present at her ball, vowing that she would be deeply offended with him if he did not come; and more than once in the course of the evening Bessie had told Ida that there was still time, there was a train now just due at Winchester, and that might have brought him. Ida breathed more freely after midnight, when it was obviously too late for any one else to arrive.

  ‘It is your fault,’ said Bessie, pettishly. ‘If you had not treated him very unkindly at Mauleverer he would be here to-night. He never failed me before.’

  Ida reddened, and then grew very pale.

  ‘I see,’ she said, ‘you think I deprive you of your cousin’s society. I will ask Miss Wendover to let me go back to France.’

  ‘No, no, no, you inhuman creature! how can you talk like that? You know that I love you ever so much better than Brian, though he is my own kith and kin. I would not lose you for worlds. I don’t care a straw about his coming, for my own sake. Only I should so like you to marry him, and be one of us. Oh, here’s that odious Dr. Rylance stealing after you. Aunt Betsy is quite right — the man would like to marry you — but you won’t accept him, will you, darling? — not even to have your own house in Cavendish Square, a victoria and brougham, and all those blessings we hear so much about from Urania. Remember, you would have her for a stepdaughter into the bargain.’

  ‘Be assured, dear Bess, I shall never be Urania’s stepmother. And now, darling, put all thoughts of matrimony out of your head; for me, at least.’

  That brief flash of Christmas and New Year’s gaiety was soon over. The Knoll resumed its wonted domestic calm. Dr. Rylance went back to Cavendish Square, and only emerged occasionally from the London vortex to spend a peaceful day or two at Kingthorpe. His daughter was not installed as mistress of his town house, as she had fondly hoped would be the case. She was permitted to spend an occasional week, sometimes stretched to ten days or a fortnight, in Cavendish Square; but the cook-housekeeper and the clever German servant, half valet half butler, still reigned supreme in that well-ordered establishment; and Urania felt that she had no more authority than a visitor. She dared not find fault with servants who had lived ten years in her father’s service, and who suited him perfectly — even had there been any legitimate reason for fault-finding, which there was not.

  Dr. Rylance having got on so comfortably during the last twelve years of his life without a mistress for his town house, was disinclined to surrender his freedom to a daughter who had more than once ventured to question his actions, to hint that he was not all-wise. He considered it a duty to introduce his daughter into the pleasant circles where he was petted and made much of; and he fondly hoped she would speedily find a husband sufficiently eligible to be allowed the privilege of taking her off her father’s hands. But in the meanwhile, Urania in London was somewhat of a bore; and Dr. Rylance was never more cheerful than when driving her to Waterloo Station.

  Miss Rylance’s life, therefore, during this period alternated between rural seclusion and London gaiety. She came back to the pastoral phase of her existence with the feelings and demeanour of a martyr; and her only consolation was found in those calm airs of superiority which seemed justified by her intimate acquaintance with society, and her free use of a kind of jargon which she called modern thought.

  ‘How you can manage to exist here all the year round without going out of your mind is more than I can understand,’ she told Bessie.

  ‘Well, I know Kingthorpe is dull,’ replied Bess, meekly, ‘but it’s a dear old hole, and I never find the days too long, especially when those odious boys are at home.’

  ‘But really now, Bessie, don’t you think it is time you should leave off playing with boys, and begin wearing gloves?’ sneered Urania.

  ‘I did wear gloves at Bournemouth, religiously — mousquetaires, up to my elbows; never went out without them. No, Ranie, I am never dull at old Kingthorpe; and then there is always a hope of Bournemouth.’

  ‘Bournemouth is worse than this!’ exclaimed Urania. ‘There is nothing so laboriously dismal as a semi-fashionable watering-place.’

  Talk as she might, Miss Rylance could not sour Bessie’s happy disposition with the vinegar of discontent. Hers was a sweet, joyous soul; and just now, had she dared to speak the truth, she would have said that this pastoral village of Kingthorpe, this cluster of fine old houses and comfortable cottages, grouped around an ancient parish church, was to her the central point of the universe, to leave which would be as Eve’s banishment from Eden. The pure and tender heart had found its shrine, and laid down its offering of reverent devotion. Mr. Jardine had said nothing as yet, but he had sedulously cultivated Bessie Wendover’s society, and had made himself eminently agreeable to her parents, who could find no fault with a man who was at once a scholar and a gentleman, and who had an income which made him comfortably independent of immediate preferment.

  He was enthusiastic, and he could afford to give his enthusiasm full scope. Kingthorpe suited him admirably. It was a parish rich in sweet associations. The present Vicar was a good, easy-going man, a High Churchman of the old school rather than the new, yet able to sympathize with men of more advanced opinions and fiercer energies.

  Thus it was that while Miss Rylance found her bower at Kingthorpe a place of dullness and discontent, Bessie rose every morning to a new day of joy and gl
adness, which began, oh! so sweetly, in the early morning service, in which John Jardine’s deep musical voice gave new force and meaning to the daily lessons, new melody to the Psalms. Ida was always present at this morning service, and the two girls used to walk home together through the dewy fields, sometimes one, sometimes the other going out of her way to accompany her friend. Bessie poured all her innocent secrets into Ida’s ear, expatiating with sweet girlish folly upon every look and tone of Mr. Jardine’s, asking Ida again and again if she thought that he cared, ever so little, for her.

  ‘You never tell me any of your secrets, Ida,’ she said, reproachfully, after one of these lengthy discussions. ‘I am always prosing about my affairs, until I must seem a lump of egotism. Why don’t you make me listen sometimes? I should be deeply interested in any dream of yours, if it were ever so wild.’

  ‘My darling, I have no dreams, wild or tame,’ said Ida. She could not say that she had no secret, having that one dreadful secret hanging over her and overshadowing her life.

  ‘And have you never been in love?’

  ‘Never. I once thought — almost thought — that I was in love. It was like drifting away in a frail, dancing little boat over an unknown sea — all very well while the sun shone and the boat went gaily — suddenly the boat fell to pieces, and I found myself in the cold, cruel water.’

  ‘Horrid!’ cried Bess, with a shudder. ‘That could not have been real love.’

  ‘No, dear, it was a will-o’-the-wisp, not the true light.’

  ‘And you have got over it?’

  ‘Quite. I am perfectly happy in the life I lead now.’

  This was the truth. There are these calm pauses in most lives — blessed intervals of bliss without passion — a period in which heart and mind are both at rest, and yet growing and becoming nobler and purer in the time of repose, just as the body grows during sleep.

  And thus Ida’s life, full and useful, glided on, and the days went by only too swiftly; for it was never out of her mind that these days of tranquil happiness were numbered, that she was bound in honour to leave Kingthorpe before Brian Walford could feel the oppression of banishment from his kindred. At present Brian Walford was living in Paris, with an old college friend, both these youths being supposed to be studying the French language and literature, with a view to making themselves more valuable at the English bar. He had given up his chambers in the Temple, as too expensive for a man living from hand to mouth. He was understood to be contributing to the English magazines, and to be getting his living decently, which was better than languishing under the cognizance of the Lamb and Flag, with no immediate prospect of briefs.

  CHAPTER XIV.

  THE TRUE KNIGHT.

  Kingthorpe, beautiful even in the winter, with its noble panorama of hills and woods, was now looking its loveliest in the leafy month of June. Ida had been living with Miss Wendover nearly eight months, and had become to her as a daughter, waiting upon her with faithful and loving service, always a bright and cheerful companion, joining with heart and hand in all good works. Her active life, her freedom from daily cares, had brightened her proud young beauty. She was lovelier than she had ever been as the belle of Mauleverer Manor, for that defiant look which had been the outcome of oppression had now given place to softness and smiles. The light of happiness beamed in her dark eyes. Between December and June this tranquil existence had scarcely been rippled by anything that could be called an event, save the one grand event of Bessie Wendover’s life — her engagement to John Jardine, who had proposed quite unexpectedly, as Bessie declared, one evening in May, when the two had gone into a certain copse at the back of The Knoll gardens, famous as the immemorial resort of nightingales. Here, instead of listening to the nightingales, or silently awaiting a gush of melody from those pensive birds, Mr. Jardine had poured out his own melodious strain, which took the form of an ardent declaration. Bessie, who had been doing ‘he loves me, loves me not,’ with every flower in the garden — forgetting that from a botanical point of view the result was considerably influenced by the nature of the flower — pretended to be intensely surprised; made believe there was nothing further from her thoughts; and then, when her emboldened lover folded her to his breast, owned shyly, and with tears, that she had loved him desperately ever since Christmas, and that she would have been heartbroken had he married anyone else.

  Colonel and Mrs. Wendover received the Curate’s declaration with the coolness which is so aggravating in parents, who would hardly be elated if the sons of God came down once more to propose for the daughters of men.

  They both considered that Bessie was ridiculously young — much too young to receive an offer of marriage. They consented, ultimately, to an engagement; but Bessie was not to be married till after her twenty-first birthday. This meant two years from next September, and Mr. Jardine pleaded hard for a milder sentence. Surely one year would be long enough to wait, when Bessie and he were so sure of their own minds.

  ‘Bessie is too young to be sure of anything,’ said the Colonel; ‘and two years will only give you time to find a living and a nice cosy vicarage, or rectory, as the case may be.’

  Mr. Jardine did not venture to remind Colonel Wendover that for him the cosiness of vicarage or rectory was a mere detail as compared with a worthy field for his labours. He meant to spend his life where it would be of most use to his fellow-creatures; even although the call of duty should come to him from the smokiest of manufacturing towns, or in the flat, dull fields of Lincolnshire, among pitmen and stockingers. He was not the kind of man to consider the snug rectory houses or fat glebes, but rather the kind of man to take upon himself some long-neglected parish, and ruin himself in building church and schools.

  Fortunately for Bessie’s hopes, however, Colonel Wendover did not know this.

  The Curate complained to Aunt Betsy of her brother’s hardness.

  ‘Why cannot we be married at the end of this year?’ he said. ‘We have pledged ourselves to spend our lives together. Why should we not begin that bright new life — bright and new, at least to me — in a few months? That would be ample time for the Colonel and Mrs. Wendover to get accustomed to the idea of Bessie’s marriage.’

  ‘But a few months will not make her old enough or wise enough for a clergyman’s wife,’ said Miss Wendover.

  ‘She has plenty of wisdom — the wisdom of a generous and tender heart — the best kind of wisdom. All her instincts, all her impulses, are pure, and true, and noble. What can age give her better than that? Girl as she is, my parish will be the better for her sweet influence. She will be the sunshine of my people’s life as well as of mine. How will she grow wiser by living two years longer, and reading novels, and dancing at Bournemouth? I don’t want her to be worldly-wise; and the better kind of wisdom comes from above. She will learn that in the quiet of her married home.’

  ‘I see,’ said Miss Wendover, smiling at him; ‘you don’t quite like the afternoon dances and tennis parties at Bournemouth.’

  ‘Pray don’t suppose I am jealous,’ said the Curate. ‘My trust in my darling’s goodness and purity is the strongest part of my love. But I don’t want to see the best years of her youth, her freshness, her girlish energy and enthusiasm, frittered away upon dances, and tennis, and dress, which has lately been elevated into an art. I want her help, I want her sympathy, I want her for my own — the better part of myself — going hand in hand with me in all my hopes and acts.’

  ‘Two years sounds a long time,’ said Miss Wendover, musingly, ‘and I suppose, at your age and Bessie’s, it is a long time; though at mine the years flow onward with such a gliding motion that it is only one’s looking-glass, and the quarterly accounts, that tell one time is moving. However, I have seen a good many of these two-year engagements—’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And I have seldom seen one of them last a twelvemonth.’

  ‘They have ended unhappily?’

  ‘Quite the contrary. They have ended in a premature wedding.
The young people have put their heads together, and have talked over the flinty-hearted parents; and some bright morning, when the father and mother have been in a good temper, the order for the trousseau has been given, the bridesmaids have received notice, and in six weeks the whole business was over, And the old people rather glad to have got rid of a love-sick damsel and her attendant swain. There is no greater nuisance in a house than engaged sweethearts. Who knows whether you and Bessie may not be equally fortunate?’

  ‘I hope we may be so,’ said the Curate; ‘but I don’t think we shall make ourselves obnoxious.’

  ‘Oh, of course you think not. Every man believes himself superior to every form of silliness, but I never saw a lover yet who did not lapse sooner or later into mild idiocy.’

  ‘Amare et sapere vix deo conceditur.’

  ‘Of course. Indeed, with the gods of Olympus it was quite the other way.

  Nothing could be more absurd than their goings on.’

  Ida was delighted at her friend’s happiness, and was never tired of hearing about Mr. Jardine’s virtues. Love had already begun to exercise a sobering influence upon Bessie. She no longer romped with the boys, and she wore gloves. She had become very studious of her appearance, but all those little coquettish arts of the toilet which she had learned last autumn at Bournemouth, the cluster of flowers pinned on her shoulder, the laces and frivolities, were eschewed; lest Mr. Jardine should be reminded of the wanton-eyed daughters of Zion, with their tinkling ornaments, and chains, and bracelets, and mufflers, and rings, and nose-jewels. She began to read with a view to improving her mind, and plodded laboriously through certain books of the advanced Anglican school which her lover had told her were good. But she learnt a great deal more from Mr. Jardine’s oral instructions than from any books, and when the Winchester boys came home for an occasional Sunday they found her brimful of ecclesiastical knowledge, and at once nicknamed her the Perambulating Rubric, or by the name of any feminine saint which their limited learning suggested. Fortunately for Bessie, however, their jests were not unkindly meant, and they liked Mr. Jardine, whose knowledge of natural history, the ways and manners of every creature that flew, or walked, or crawled, or swam in that region of hill and valley, made him respectable in their eyes.