One blessing, however, is that a very little satisfies them in the fleshly representatives of their ideal heroes, and I am often surprised by being told that young FitzGigfiz of the Blues, who parts his hair down the middle, and who never had an idea in his life, is the very image of Lancelot of the Lake, or that Hokus (of Pokus, Hokus, and Sons, bankers, Lombard-street) is the living representative of Augustine Caxton. Hokus buys black-letter books and rare editions, and will give fifteen guineas for a single volume, if it is only dirty enough. I am sure, during the Adam-Bede fever, I was quite fidgety whilst our carpenter Humphries, a most respectable person and by no means bad-looking, was in the house, putting down the stair-carpets, for I daily expected that Augustina would express a desire to marry him, and turn methodist preacher.
There is another source of suffering too: my girls sing. The Signor Caterwaulini is an expensive man; but I don’t so much mind that, for he teaches them Italian songs, and I don’t object to Italian songs. One doesn’t understand the words; one can go to sleep. What does it matter to me if “Una voce poco fa”? I’m sure “Una vocé’ was quite at liberty to do anything of the sort, if it was agreeable to him. But O, the agony of those English songs! That dreadful Annie, who is left in sorrow; that abominable phantasmal fantasticality (P. F. is a specimen of the bad language those girls have taught me), that decomposed inanity, “Willie,” the young person who is always missed. I really was put to the blush the other day, on bringing William Williams, of Lloyd’s, home to dinner, to find Juliana seated at the piano, singing, “O, Willie, we have missed you; welcome, welcome home!” Mrs. Blankstars told quite another story, for there was only cold meat for dinner, and she looked like thunder. As to that young woman who has been requested to go into the garden without intermission for these last four years and upwards, and who has apparently never gone, I will refrain from stating my feelings with regard to her, for there is a degree of bitterness in those feelings untranslateable in these pages. If I do not fully appreciate the amount of hardship involved in the necessity of bestowing “the hand” where it is utterly impossible “the heart” can, either at the present time or any remoter period, be its accompaniment, it is not for want of having heard enough about it. In short, so much have I suffered from Stephen Glover, Balfe, and the Christy Minstrels, that on my daughters yesterday stating in chorus that they were “off to Charlestown early in the morning,” I really felt inclined to take them at their word, and give them a cheque for their outfit and travelling expenses. There are no limits to the recitals I could give of my acute sufferings of some eight years; but as there are limits to the patience of my readers, and, as wise Herbert has said, it is no more good manners “to talk all than to eat all at a feast,’* I will say no more; but with a solemn warning — warning not to be disregarded, however short falling of dismal truth, or inarticulately rendered, said warning may be — close my dreary record.
Let the fathers of families see that their daughters, from a very early age, are taught that life has something better to demand of them than novel-reading, or even worship of sublime and unapproachable Alfred; that these, good in themselves, are a means, not an end; and that if their books do not teach them better things than to lie on the sofa all day reading them, and to spend all the rest of the day talking of them, they do not read those books aright. What better — or what in a hundredth degree so good — can I say than this? Let them be taught to follow the precept of their own prophet:
“If time be heavy on your hands,
Are there no beggars at your gates,
Nor any poor about your lands?
O, teach the orphan boy to read,
Or teach the orphan girl to sew.”
THE MYSTERY AT FERNWOOD
“No, Isabel, I do not consider that Lady Adela seconded her son’s invitation at all warmly.”
This was the third time within the last hour that my aunt had made the above remark. We were seated opposite each other in a first-class carriage of the York express, and the flat fields of ripening wheat were flitting by ns like yellow shadows under the afternoon sunshine. We were going on a visit to Fernwood, a country mansion ten miles from York, in order that I might become acquainted with the family of Mr. Lewis Wendale, to whose only son Laurence I was engaged to be married.
Laurence Wendale and I had only been acquainted during the brief May and June of my first London season, which I — orphan heiress of a wealthy Calcutta merchant — had passed under the roof of my aunt, Mrs. Maddison Trevor, the dashing widow of a major in the Life Guards, and my father’s only sister. Mrs. Trevor had made many objections to this brief six weeks’ engagement between Laurence and me; but the impetuous young Yorkshireman had overruled everything. What objection could there be? he asked. He was to have two thousand a-year and Fern wood at his father’s death; forty thousand pounds from a maiden aunt the day he came of age — for he was not yet one-and-twenty, my impetuous young lover. As for his family, let Mrs. Trevor look into Burke’s County Families for the Wendales of Fernwood. His mother was Lady Adela, youngest daughter of Lord Kingwood, of Castle Kingwood, county Kildare. What objection could my aunt have, then? His family did not know me, and might not approve of the match, urged my aunt. Laurence laughed aloud; a long ringing peal of that merry, musical laughter I loved so well to hear.
“Not approve!” he cried—”not love my little Bella! That is too good a joke!” On which immediately followed an invitation to Fernwood, seconded by a note from Lady Adela Wendale.
To this note my aunt was never tired of taking objection. It was cold, it was constrained; it had been only written to please Laurence. How little I thought of the letter! and yet it was the first faint and shadowy indication of that terrible rock ahead upon which my life was to be wrecked; the first feeble link in the chain of the one great mystery in which the fate of so many was involved.
The letter was cold, certainly. Lady Adela started by declaring she should be most happy to see us; she was all anxiety to be introduced to her charming daughter-in-law. And then my lady ran off to tell us how dull Fernwood was, and how she feared we should regret our long journey into the heart of Yorkshire to a lonely country-house, where we should find no one but a captious invalid, a couple of nervous women, and a young man devoted to farming and field-sports.
But I was not afraid of being dull where my light-hearted Laurence was; and I overruled all my aunt’s objections, ordered half a dozen new dresses, and carried Mrs. Maddison Trevor off to the Great Northern Station before she had time to remonstrate.
Laurence had gone on before to see that all was prepared for us; and had promised to meet us at York, and drive us over to Fernwood in his mail-phaeton. He was standing on the platform as the train entered the station, radiant with life and happiness.
Laurence Wendale was very handsome; but perhaps his greatest charm consisted in that wonderful vitality, that untiring energy and indomitable spirit, which made him so different from all other young men whom I had met. So great was this vitality, that, by some magnetic influence, it seemed to communicate itself to others. I was never tired when Laurence was with me. I could waltz longer with him for my partner; ride longer in the Row with him for my cavalier; sit out an opera or examine an exhibition of pictures with less fatigue when he was near. His presence pervaded a whole house; his joyous laugh ran through every room. It seemed as if where’ he was sorrow could not come.
I felt this more than ever as we drew nearer Fernwood. The country was bleak and bare; wide wastes of moorland stretched away on either side of the by-road down which we drove. The afternoon sunshine had faded out, leaving a cold gray sky, with low masses of leaden cloud brooding close over the landscape, and shutting in the dim horizon. But no influence of scenery or atmosphere could affect Laurence. His spirits were even higher than usual this afternoon.
“They have fitted up the oak-rooms for you, ladies,” he said. “Such solemn and stately chambers, with high-canopied beds crowned with fanerai plumes; black-oak pan
eling; portraits of dead-and-gone Wendales: Mistress Aurora, with pannier-hoops and a shepherdess’s crook; Mistress Lydia, with ringlets à la Sevignè and a pearl necklace; Mortimer Wendale, in a Ramilies wig; Theodore, with love-locks, velvet doublet, and Spanish-leather boots. Such a collection of them! You may expect to see them all descend from their frames in the witching time of night to warm their icy fingers at your sea-coal fires. Your expected arrival has made quite a sensation in our dull old abode. My mother has looked up from the last new novel half a dozen times this day, I verily believe, to ask if all due preparations were being made; while my dear, active, patient, indefatigable sister Lucy has been running about superintending the arrangements ever since breakfast.”
“Your sister Lucy!” I said, catching at his last words; “I shall so love her, Laurence.”
“I hope you will, darling,” he answered, almost gravely, “for she has been the best and dearest sister to me. And yet I’m half afraid; Lucy is ten years older than you — grave, reserved, sometimes almost melancholy; but if ever there was a banished angel treading this earth in human form, my sister Lucy surely is that guardian spirit.”
“Is she like yon, Laurence?”
“Like me! O, no, not in the least. She is only my half-sister, you know. She resembles her mother, who died young.”
We were at the gates of Fernwood when he said this, — high wooden gates, with stone pillars moss-grown and dilapidated; a tumble-down-looking lodge, kept by a slatternly woman, whose children were at play in a square patch of ground planted with cabbages and currant-bushes, fenced in with a rotten paling, and ambitiously called a garden. From this lodge entrance a long avenue stretched away for about half a mile, at the end of which a great red-brick mansion, built in the Tudor style, frowned at us, rather as if in defiance than in welcome. The park was entirely uncultivated; the trunks of the trees were choked with the tangled underwood; the fern grew deep in the long vistas, broken here and there by solitary pools of black water, on whose quiet borders we heard the flap of the heron’s wing, and the dull croaking of an army of frogs.
Lady Adela was right. Fernwood was a dull place. I could scarcely repress a shudder as we drove along the dark avenue, while my poor aunt’s teeth chattered audibly. Accustomed to spend three parts of the year in Onslow-square, and the autumn months at Brighton or Ryde, this dreary Yorkshire mansion was a terrible trial to her rather oversensitive nerves.
Laurence seemed to divine the reason of our silence. “The place is frightfully neglected, Mrs. Trevor,” he said apologetically; “but I do not mean this sort of thing to last, I assure you. Before I bring my delicate little Bella to reign at Fernwood, I shall have landscape-gardeners and upholsterers down by the score, and do my best to convert this dreary wilderness into a terrestrial paradise. I cannot tell you why the place has been suffered to fall into decay; certainly not for want of money, still less for want of opportunity, for my father is an idle man, to whom one would imagine restoring and rebuilding would afford a delightful hobby. No, there is no reason why the place should have been so neglected.”
He said this more to himself than to us, as if the words were spoken in answer to some long train of thought of his own. I watched his face earnestly, for I had seldom seen him look so thoughtful. Presently he said, with more of his usual manner, “As you are close upon the threshold of Fernwood now ladies, I ought perhaps to tell you that you will find ours a most low-spirited family. With everything in life to make us happy, we seem for ever under a cloud. Ever since I can remember my poor father, he has been sinking slowly into decay, almost in the same way as this neglected place, till now he is a confirmed invalid, without any positive illness. My mother reads novels all day, and seems to exist upon sal-volatile and spirits of lavender. My sister, the only active person in the house, is always thoughtful, and very often melancholy. Mind, I merely tell you this to prepare you for anything you may see; not to depress you, for you may depend upon my exertions towards reforming this dreary household, which has sunk into habitual despondency from sheer easy fortune and want of vexation.”
The phaeton drew up before a broad flight of stone steps as Laurence ceased speaking, and in five minutes more he had assisted my aunt and myself to alight, and had ushered us into the presence of Lady Adela and Miss Lucy Wendale.
We found Lady Adela, as her son’s description had given us reason to expect, absorbed in a novel. She threw down her book as we entered, and advanced to meet us with considerable cordiality; rather, indeed, as if she really were grateful to us for breaking in upon her solitary life.
“It is so good of you to come,” she said, folding me in her slender arms with an almost motherly embrace, “and so kind of you, too, my dear Mrs. Trevor, to abandon all your town pleasures for the sake of bringing this dear girl to me. Believe me, we will do all in our power to make you comfortable, if you can put up with very limited society; for we have received no company whatever since my son’s childhood, and I do not think my visiting-list could muster half-a-dozen names.”
Lady Adela was an elegant-looking woman, in the very prime of life; but her handsome face was thin and careworn, and premature wrinkles gathered about her melancholy blue eyes and thoughtful mouth. While she was talking to my aunt, Lucy Wendale and I drew nearer to each other.
Laurence’s half-sister was by no means handsome; pale and sallow, with dark hair and rather dull gray eyes, she looked as if some hidden sorrow had quenched out the light of her life long ago, in her earliest youth; some sorrow that had neither been forgotten, nor lessened by time, but that had rather grown with her growth, and strengthened with her strength, until it had become a part of her very self, — some disappointed attachment, I thought, some cruel blow that had shattered a girl’s first dream, and left a broken-hearted woman to mourn the fatal delusion. In my utter ignorance of life, I thought these were the only griefs which ever left a woman’s life desolate.
“You will try and be happy at Fernwood, Isabel,” Miss Wendale said gently, as she drew me into a seat by her side, while Laurence bent fondly over us both. I do not believe, dear as we were to each other, that my Laurence ever loved me as he loved this pale-faced half-sister. “You will try and be happy, will you not, dear Isabel? Laurence has been breaking-in the prettiest chestnut mare in all Yorkshire, I think, that you may explore the country with us. I have heard what a daring horsewoman you are. The pianos have been put in tune for you, and the billiard-table re-covered, that you may have exercise on rainy days; and if we cannot give you much society, we will do all else to prevent your feeling dull.”
“I shall be very happy here with you, dear Lucy,” I said; “but you tell me so much of the dulness of Fernwood, while, I daresay, you yourself have a hundred associations that make the old place very dear to you.”
She looked down as I spoke, and a very faint flush broke through the sallow paleness of her complexion.
“I am not very fond of Fernwood,” she said gravely.
It was at Fernwood, then, that the great sorrow of her life came upon her, I thought.
“No, Lucy,” said Laurence almost impatiently, “everybody knows this dull place is killing you by inches, and yet nothing on earth can induce you to quit it. When we all go to Scarborough or Burlington, when mamma goes to Harrogate, when I run up to town to rub off my provincial rust, and see what the world is made of outside these dreary gates, — you obstinately persist in staying at home; and the only reason you can urge for doing so is, that you must remain here to take care of that unfortunate invalid of yours, Mr. William.”
I was holding Lucy’s hand in mine, and I felt the poor wasted little fingers tremble as her brother spoke. My curiosity was strongly aroused.
“Mr. William!” I exclaimed half involuntarily.
“Ah, to be sure, Bella, I forgot to tell you of that member of our household, but as I have never seen him, I may be forgiven the omission. This Mr. William is a poor relative of my father’s; a hopeless invalid, bedridden, I belie
ve — is he not, Lucy? — who requires a strong man and an experienced nurse to look after him, and who occupies the entire upper story of one wing of the house. Poor Mr. William, invalid as he is, must certainly be a most fascinating person. My mother goes to see him every day, but as stealthily as if she were paying a secret visit to some condemned criminal. I have often met my father coming away from his rooms, pale and melancholy; and, as for my sister Lucy, she is so attached to this sick dependent of ours, that, as I have just said, nothing will induce her to leave the house, for fear his nurse or his valet should fail in their care of him.”
I still held Lucy’s hand, but it was perfectly steady now. Could this poor relative, this invalid dependent, have any part in the sorrowful mystery that had overshadowed her life? And yet, no; I thought that could scarcely be, for she looked up with such perfect self-possession as she answered her brother:
Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon Page 1055
