Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon

by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

  Gerard sighed as he acknowledged the force of this reproach. All his summers of late years had been spent far afield. In the Tyrol, in Scotland, in Sweden, in Westmoreland, at Carlsbad, anywhere whither Mrs. Champion’s caprices or Mr. Champion’s “cure” led the lady and her satellite. He had enjoyed no more independent existence than one of Jupiter’s moons, but had been constrained to revolve in the orbit of his planet.

  He went into the garden with his mother. Every shrub was a reproach, for all had grown with the growth of years since he had seen them in their summer glory. A flying visit at Christmas or the New Year had been as much as his goddess allowed him. And now — albeit his chain was unbroken — he had a feeling that it was lengthened, and that he was going to do as he liked henceforward.

  The stout, comfortable-looking butler, whom he remembered a lad in buttons, brought tea, and roasted cakes, and poached eggs, and clouted cream, and other rustic luxuries; and the tennis players, who had taken one tea at four o’clock, were very glad to take another at six. Gerard was introduced to Miss Vere, otherwise Barbara — a girl with a handsome face and a commanding figure, but who looked as if she had vecu, Gerard thought, and who at once began to talk of the houses at which they had met in London, which were all the smartest houses, be it remarked. The young lady sunk any lesser mansions at which they might have rubbed shoulders.

  “I think you know Mrs. Champion,’’ Miss Vere remarked innocently. “She and my cousin, Mrs. Harper, are great chums.”

  “Mrs. Theodore Harper?”

  “Yes, Mrs. Theodore.”

  “I know her well, a very pretty woman.”

  “Yes, she is by way of being a beauty,” said Miss Vere, who was much handsomer, and no doubt was fully aware of her superiority; “but don’t you think she’s rather silly about that boy of hers — taking him everywhere?”

  “Upon that point I consider her positively imbecile. A child in an Eton jacket should not be obtruded upon the society of reasonable men and women. I believe she only takes him about with her in order that people may exclaim, ‘Your son, Mrs. Harper? Impossible! How could you have a son of twelve years old, when you can be at most two and twenty?’”

  “And then she smiles — carefully — through her magnolia bloom, and is perfectly happy for the rest of the afternoon, while the boy Bits turning over illustrated books, and boring himself to death.”

  “Or sucking surreptitious lollipops, till some prosy old Etonian goes and sits beside him, and talks about the playing fields and the river,” said Gerard.

  Lilian and her mother sat smiling at this conversation, happily unconscious of its artificiality. Lilian, who was lily-fair and guileless as a child, looked up to Barbara Vere with eyes of admiring wonder. Miss Vere’s exquisitely fitting gowns, her aplomb, and her knowledge of the side scenes of life commanded the village maiden’s respect. To talk to a girl who had the peerage at her fingers’ ends, knew to a shade every important person’s political opinions, was familiar with all the society scandals and all the approaching alliances, was a privilege for the Rector’s daughter. She wondered how the brilliant Barbara could endure the jog-trot domesticity of the Rectory, and it had never occurred to her that Barbara Vere put in for repairs at this quiet little harbour after the wear and tear of her annual voyage on the high seas of London society.

  “I feel so fresh and so happy when I am with you,” said Barbara. “I leave my French maid and my powder-box in London, and steep myself in the atmosphere of Milton’s ‘Allegro.’”

  She might have added that in this clerical seclusion she did not trouble to make up her eyebrows, or to put on just that one artistic touch of rouge upon the cheek-bone, which in London drawingrooms gave lustre to her fine dark eyes. Here her life was spent for the most part in a garden, and she was wise enough to know how ghastly all artificial embellishments become under such conditions.

  CHAPTER VI. THE FACE IN THE VISION.

  THE little party of four sat long at the tea-table under the leafy branches of the tulip-tree. The Rectory garden was on a level stretch of ground; but beyond the shrubbery that girdled lawn and parterre, the glebe meadows sloped towards the low, irregular cliff; and below the undulating line of the cliff danced the bright wavelets of the estuary. The garden and its surroundings were alike lovely, fertile, smiling — not the grand scenery of North Devon, nor the still bolder coast-line of North Cornwall, by that steep rock where once uprose Tintagel’s crown of towers, but a placid and pastoral region which seems to invite restfulness and content with things that be rather than soaring aspirations or heroic endeavour.

  Landward of the Rectory garden and orchard there rose a wooded hill, whose summit commanded a fine view of the channel, and the white-winged ships sailing away towards Start Point. That hill, with its wood and coppice, had been Gerard’s delight in the summer holidays of boyhood. He had read there in his long vacations — and there were spots which to this hour recalled certain passages in Homer and Virgil, and certain difficulties in higher mathematics.

  He thought of that far-off time as he sat, sipping a third cup of tea, in a dreamy mood, after having done scanty justice to the plethora of rustic fare. The two girls had gone indoors, leaving mother and son tête-à-tête, Mrs. Hillersdon sitting silent, plying those busy needles which knitted socks for half the old men and children in the parish, and Gerard lost in reverie. He was the first to break the silence.

  “Mother, I saw a face the other day which reminded me of home — and of — ever so many years ago — five or six years, at least — and yet I can’t associate the face with any one in this parish. I can’t tell you how familiar it seemed, or how I have worried my brains to find out where and how I saw it.”

  “A man’s face, or a woman’s?”

  “A girl’s face — or rather say the face of a woman of three or four and twenty — a woman in humble life. It must have been one of your cottagers, but I can’t identify her. It is a very lovely face.”

  “But where did you see this young woman? Why didn’t you question her?”

  “The face flashed upon me and was gone. There was no time for asking questions. I want you to help me, if you can. So lovely a face must have made some impression upon you. Think of the prettiest girls you have known in this village and the surrounding neighbourhood.”

  “There are so many pretty girls. Devon is famous for “beauty. A good many of the cottagers about here have given me their photographs. People are very fond of being photographed now that the luxury is so cheap. I have an album that I keep on purpose for my parish friends. You can look through it this evening, if you like, and see if you can identify your young woman.”

  “She would not be one among a herd,” Gerard answered irritably. “I know what Devonian beauty means — bright blue eyes, fine carnations. This girl is utterly unlike the type. Surely you can remember a girl of exceptional beauty, with whom we had some kind of association any time within the last ten years, but whom I must have seen seldom, or I should be able to identify her.”

  “Exceptional beauty!” repeated Mrs. Hillersdon, thoughtfully. “I can recall nobody in the parish whom I should call exceptionally beautiful. But men have such odd notions about beauty. I have heard a girl with a snub nose and a wide mouth extolled as if she were Venus. Why are you so anxious to know more about this young woman?”

  “I have reason to think she is in distress, and I should like to help her — now that I am rich enough to do foolish things.”

  “It would not be foolish if she is a good girl — but beware of exquisite beauty in humble life, Gerard. It would make me miserable if—”

  “Oh, my dear mother, we have all read ‘David Copperfield.’ I am not going to imitate Steerforth in his treatment of little Emily. I am mystified about this girl, and I want to learn who she is and whence she came.”

  “Not from this parish, Gerard, I am sure, unless you can find her in my album.”

  “Let me see your album, this minute,” cried Gerard.
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  The parlourmaid approached as be spoke, and began to clear the tea-table.

  “Bun to my room and bring me the big brown photograph album,” said Mrs. Hillersdon, and the brisk young parlourmaid tripped away and presently returned with a brown quarto which had seen long service. Gerard turned the leaves eagerly. He beheld a curious collection of old-fashioned finery, mushroom hats, crinolines, Garibaldi shirts, festoons, flounces, and Mariafolds, polonaises, jackets, mantles, of every style that has been worn within the last thirty years — old men and maidens, fathers, mothers, children, babies in abundance.

  There were plenty of pretty faces — faces which even the rustic photographer could not spoil; but there was not one which offered the faintest resemblance to the face he had seen in Justin Jermyn’s chambers.

  “No!” he exclaimed, flinging the book upon the table in disgust, “there is no sign of her among your bumpkins.”

  “Please don’t sneer at my bumpkins. You don’t know what good, bright, patient, hardworking creatures there are among them, or how proud I am to know that they are fond of me.”

  “The girl I saw has an ethereal face — not flesh, but spirit-dreaming eyes, large and soft, shadowed by long dark lashes — fair hair, not golden, mark you — but distinctly fair, a pale soft brown, like the coat of a fallow deer. Her features are exquisitely delicate, modelling of nose and chin like a Madonna by Raffaelle — yes, it is a Raffaelle face, so soft in colouring, so spiritual — but sad, unutterably sad.”

  “Hester Davenport,” exclaimed Mrs. Hillersdon, suddenly. “You have described her to the life. Poor girl. Where did you meet her? I thought she was in Australia.”

  “Perhaps only in a dream. But who is Hester Davenport?”

  “Don’t you remember the curate, Nicholas Davenport, the man whom your father engaged without adequate scrutiny into antecedents or character, on the strength of his fine manner and appearance, and his evident superiority to the common run of Churchmen — a man of great theological learning, your father told me? He had been tutor to Lord Raynfield’s son — in Cumberland — and he gave your father a letter of recommendation from Lord Raynfield, dated some seven years before he came to us. You know how unsuspicious your father is. It never occurred to him that the man’s character might have changed since that letter was written. He was with us a year and a half, and towards the end of that time his daughter came from Hanover, where she had been sent for a year or so to learn German. We were all struck with her beauty and sweet gentle manners.”

  “Yes, yes, I remember now. I was at home when she arrived. How could I forget? She came to tea with Lilian one afternoon when I was loafing about the garden, and I talked to her for five minutes or so, not more, for I had to hurry off to catch the train for Exeter. I saw her once after that — met her on the sands one morning. Yes, the face comes back to me as it was then — in all the freshness of girlhood.”

  “She was only seventeen when she came from Germany.”

  “And Davenport went wrong, turned out an incorrigible drunkard, did he not?”

  “Yes; it was unspeakably sad. He used to have occasional lapses — never during his church work — but when he was about in the parish. He told your father that he suffered from slight attacks of epilepsy; so slight as to be of no hindrance to his duty. This went on for over a year, and then, on All Saints’ Day, he had an attack in the reading-desk — a lapse of consciousness as your father called it. He seemed very strange. We were puzzled — but none of us guessed the dreadful truth, till one Sunday evening, about a month after his poor daughter came home from Germany, he went up into the pulpit, reeling, and clutching at the balustrade, and began to preach in the wildest language, uttering dreadful blasphemies, and bursting into hysterical laughter. Your father had to go up into the pulpit with one of the churchwardens and bring him down by main force. He was perfectly mad; but it was drink, Gerard, drink, that had caused all the evil. He had been taking brandy or chloral for years — sometimes one, sometimes the other. He was a secret drinker — that learned, intellectual man, a man who had taken the highest honours at Oxford, a man whom Oxford men remembered as a light among them.”

  “What became of him after that?”

  “He had to leave us, of course, and as your father dared not recommend him to anybody, and as the scandal of his behaviour had been heard of throughout the diocese, there was no hope of his getting any further employment in the Church. Your father was very sorry for him, and gave him a little money to help him to emigrate. His old pupil, Lord Wolverley, helped him, and old college friends contributed, and he and his daughter sailed for Melbourne. I went to Plymouth to see them off, for I was very sorry for the poor motherless girl, in her deep distress, and your father and others wanted to be sure that they really got off, as Davenport was a shifty kind of man, and might have let the ship Bail without him. They went out in a sailing vessel, crowded with first, second, and third-class emigrants. They went second-class, and I can see her now as I saw her that day, standing in the bows with her hand through her father’s arm, while he waved his handkerchief to me. She was white and wan, poor child, but exquisitely lovely. I could not help thinking of what her life might have been if she had had good and prosperous parents; yet I know she adored that unhappy father.”

  “Exquisitely lovely, yes,” mused Gerard, “and going out to a new world in an emigrant ship, and with a drunken old man for her only guardian and stay. A hard fate for exquisite loveliness, is it not, mother? And now, I believe she is in London, working at a sewing-machine for starvation wages.”

  “But how came you to learn so much, and yet not to know more?”

  “Did I not tell you that it was a dream? “ he asked, with a mocking smile! “But I mean to know more, mother; I mean to find this girl by hook or by crook, and to help her!”

  “You must not mix yourself in her life, Gerard,” said Mrs. Hillersdon, gravely; “that might end badly.”

  “Oh, mother, you are full of fears! One would think I were Mephistopheles, or Faust; while all I want is that my money may be of some use to a friendless girl. Hester Davenport! I remember how lovely I thought her, but I was no more in love with her than with the Venus of the Capitol. Strange that I should have failed to identify the face, till you helped me!”

  He went indoors with his mother, and found his room — the room which had been his ever since he left the nursery — ready for occupation. The old nursemaid, whom he had teased and joked with in the old Marlborough holidays, had bustled and hurried to get Mr. Gerard’s room aired and dusted, and his portmanteau unpacked, and all things arranged before the dressing-bell rang out from the old wooden cupola that crowned the low roof. Everything had the odour he knew so well — a perfume of lavender and dried rose leaves, mixed with some strange Indian scent which was an inheritance from his mother’s side of the house, her people having been civilians of good standing in Bengal for half a century. It was a curious composite perfume, which for him meant the atmosphere of home, and brought back memories of childhood.

  The Rector received the news of his son’s altered fortunes at first with incredulity, and then with gladness mingled with awe.

  “The whole business seems too wonderful to be true, Gerard,” he said; “but if it really is true, you are just the luckiest fellow I ever heard of — to inherit an old man’s wealth without ever having cringed to him or fawned upon him while he was alive — to receive two millions sterling, without having to say thank you, except to Providence!”

  The Rector was by no means a selfish man, and he had been an indulgent father, bearing with a good deal of extravagance and some perversity on the part of his son, but he was not slow to see that this fortune must needs mean comfort and luxury for him in his declining years, and a freedom from financial cares which would be new to himself and his wife, liberally as the. Rectory was administered. His living was worth seven hundred a year, and he and his wife between them had about four hundred of independent income; and it is not easy
for a man of good family and with refined tastes to live within an income of eleven hundred a year, especially when he is rector of a rural parish in which the lower orders look to him for aid in all their necessities, while the surrounding gentry expect him to play an equal part in all their sports and hospitalities.

  Gerard stayed with his people just two days. That was as much time as he could spare for inaction, since there was upon him the natural restlessness of a man whose fortunes have undergone a sudden and wondrous change, and who is eager to put newly acquired power to the test. Father, mother, and sister would gladly have kept him longer in that rural paradise, and Barbara Vere, having got wind of his inheritance, exercised all her blandishments, her spells of woven paces and of weaving hands, to bind him to her side. Garden, and hills, and rustic lanes, and summer sea, were all suggestive of restfulness and oblivion of the busy world; — but a young man who has just come into a fortune is no more to be satisfied with indolence in a garden than Eve was. He too, like Eve, longs to taste the fruit of the fatal tree.

  “I have seen what life is like to a man who never has a spare five-pound note,” Gerard told his sister; “I want to find out how life tastes to a millionaire. And when I have furnished rooms or a house, and have settled down a little, you must come and keep house for me, Lilian—”

  “Nonsense, dear! You will be marrying before the year is out.”

  “I have no idea of marrying. There is nothing so unlikely as my marriage. You shall be mistress of my house.”

  “I couldn’t leave mother — at least, not for ever so long,” said Lilian.

  “In years to come she will need you more than she needs you now. I begin to understand you, Lilian. That tall, ill-looking curate — Mr. Cumberland — has something to do with your hesitations.”