Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon

by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

  ‘ The places I have seen are passing lovely; but there’s not one of them to compare with the gray towers and green woods of Ingleshaw, in my mind, Lucie. Of course you expected me after my telegram?’

  ‘ I have been expecting you every moment, though I suppose it was a physical impossibility that you could come before now?’

  ‘ Well, yes, unless I had come in a balloon. They tell me his lordship is in London.’

  ‘ Yes; there was some important division; but he will be home in a day or two, I hope.’

  ‘ And in the meantime I am your guest.’

  ‘ Yes, and I am forgetting my duties as a hostess. You must be hungry or thirsty, after your journey. Let me order luncheon for you.’

  ‘ No, dear. I lunched at the Charing Cross Hotel. I have no such low wants as meat or drink. I want to look at you, to talk to you, to see what change the last two years have made in you.’

  ‘Do you find me very much altered?’ asked Lucille, her eyelids drooping under the ardent admiration of his gaze.

  ‘Not altered. The bud does not alter when it blossoms into the rose. My bud has blossomed, that is all. And you are not to make your début this season, Lucie? I am so glad of that.’

  ‘Why, Bruno?’

  ‘Because I shall have you all to myself. You and I will drain the cup of bliss as it is brewed at Ingleshaw. We will be children again. We will picnic, we will light fires and boil tea-kettles, we’ll revel in blackberry-hunting, nutting, mushroom gathering. I have half a mind to resume the manufacture of daisy-chains. It is almost exciting, for the stalks are so liable to give way at critical moments.’

  ‘My father says you are to go into Parliament, and become a great politician.’

  ‘Of course! I know I am an embryo Canning; but I mean to enjoy the embryo stage as long as I can. You shall help me. We’ll read blue-books together. Hansard is intensely interesting to right-minded people whose brains are not soddened by novels and poetry.’

  ‘I should be so proud if I could help you.’

  ‘If you could? You can; you shall. You shall by my Egeria; and between us we will do as much good for England as Numa did for Rome.’

  ‘Ah, Bruno, if you can find some good way of helping the poor, how proud I shall be of your political career!’ said Lucille, thinking of that weed from the waste of Whitechapel which she was eager to cultivate into a flower. ‘ There is a poor girl in this house — a creature whom I found in the plantation almost dying — and she has opened my eyes to the sad state of things among the London poor.’

  ‘Ah, my dearest child, that is an old canker. Heaven knows how legislation is to find a cure for it! The favourite panacea of the present day is education; perhaps the coming idea may be food. When we have failed in the cultivation of sound minds in half-starved bodies, we may try again, and begin at the other end. And so you rescued some poor dying girl, and brought her home to your own house? That sounds quixotic’

  ‘O Bruno, if we were all a little more like Don Quixote, the world might be better than it is.’

  ‘True, dearest; the sweetest natures are those of the people who are oftenest taken in.’

  ‘Would you like to see her?’

  ‘Her? Who? ‘ asked Bruno vaguely, his eyes dwelling on the fair young face in which every beauty had developed within the period of his absence.

  Not easy were it to imagine a fairer picture than these two sitting side by side in the calm afternoon light — the young man tall, broad-shouldered, with dark complexion and strongly-marked countenance, eyes of that sombre brown which seems the natural hue of thought, but just now with a smile of much sweetness lighting up his face; Lucille, delicately fair, with eyes of limpid blue, and exquisitely chiselled features, a thoroughly patrician beauty — the two looking at each other with such happy trustfulness, two souls that were not afraid of betraying their perfect union.

  ‘My poor girl,’ answered Lucille. ‘Her name is Bess; she has not told me her surname. I am doubtful if she has ever known one, and I don’t like to ask her awkward questions.’

  ‘Don Quixote is nowhere in the scale of chivalry, compared with you,’ said Bruno, smiling at her.

  ‘Would you like to see her?’

  ‘Not the faintest objection. I don’t mind looking on at a procession of surnameless damsels, so long as you stay and look on with me.’

  ‘I want you to see her, for I know you are a judge of character. Dear old Marjorum has been so disagreeable about her — calls me imprudent for giving her shelter; vows that harm will come of it; and both she and Tompion talk about burglars, just as if all poor people were thieves.’

  ‘I’m afraid I should justify that idea if I were houseless and starving. I should make my poor little effort towards bringing about universal equality in the financial line. La propriéte c’est le vol. And so dear old Marjorum thinks you have picked up a she-burglar, and trembles for the safety of the family plate?’

  ‘She is so dreadfully prejudiced,’ said Lucille, ringing the bell.

  She told the tall and powdered youth who attended that the young person in Tompion’s charge was to bring in the afternoon tea. This was Tompion’s special duty, her young mistress preferring the ministration of her own maid at this unceremonious meal to the statelier attendance of butler or footman; and Tompion bristled with indignation on receiving the powdered youth’s message. But she dared not disobey.

  Bruno had forgotten the existence of his cousin’s portégée before the tea was brought; he had so much to say to Lucille after their long separation, so much to tell her, so many questions to ask.

  ‘You must have enjoyed yourself immensely,’ said Lucille, listening open-eyed to a rapid account of rambles from Rome to Madrid; from Dresden to Odessa; a bewildering confusion of catacombs, Escurial, royal picture-galleries, Tyrolese mountain and woodland, Danube, Prado, Norwegian fisheries, Roman Carnival. ‘You seem to have seen everything; but I think you must have travelled rather in the style of those American tourists one reads about. Confess, now, that you scampered,’ said Lucille.

  ‘If I did, it was that I might come home to you all the sooner,’ replied Bruno.

  The door was thrown open by the powdered youth, with that grand air which distinguishes the thoroughbred footman from the promoted knife-boy. With the same broad dignity of action the tall youth brought forward a Chippendale tea-table, and unfolded its inlaid leaves before his mistress, just in time to receive the circular Japanese tea-tray which Bess, shy, and with downcast eyelids, carried into the room.

  Bruno looked up at her, first with a kindly interest, and then with undisguised admiration. Perhaps in all his life he had never seen such perfect beauty — not in marble or on canvas in all those art-galleries where he had feasted upon ideal beauty to satiety during the last two years. The face was not more perfect, perhaps, than those idealised models of the old painters and sculptors; only it was alive: a living, radiant, vivid beauty, blushing, tremulous, with the shy sweet sense of its own power.

  For a novice in the ways of civilisation, Bess performed the duties of her situation admirably. A clever girl, whose wits have been sharpened by semi-starvation, can learn anything which is a mere matter of eye and hand. Bess handed the porcelain cups and silver cream-ewer as deftly as if she had been handling porcelain and silver all her life. There was no uncouthness in her movements. Lucille detained her as long as she reasonably could, anxious that Bruno should have leisure for observation. They talked only of the lightest topics while she waited upon them; and that light airy talk seemed to Bess like a new language. Every word, every intonation, was different from the words and. tones to which she had been accustomed. To her ear, naturally delicate, that refined speech had almost the charm of music. She drank in every tone; and as she looked at Bruno Challoner, mentally comparing that tall strong frame, those finely-cut definite features, and the dark thoughtful eyes, with the wizened stunted undergrowth, or burly and bloated overgrowth, of the companions of her youth, the craf
ty mouth, the ferret eyes, this man appeared to her as a grand and godlike creature, the inhabitant of an unknown world.

  ‘Now for your opinion,’ said Lucille eagerly, when Bess had left the room with the tea-tray. ‘Do you think I have done a very dreadful thing in befriending that poor creature?’

  ‘Indeed no, dear. I don’t see any sign of the burglarious temperament,’ answered Bruno, smiling at his cousin’s earnest face; ‘but at the same time it may be rather difficult to know what to do with your protégée. We must ask his lordship’s advice. I don’t think you ought to keep her in the Castle, since you know nothing whatever of her antecedents; and, after all, the Ingleshaw plate-room, or even your own jewel-cases, might be a temptation.’

  ‘O Bruno, when you have just seen her sweet innocent face!’

  ‘Not to her perhaps, but to her friends,’ said Bruno, apologetically. ‘No young woman can grow up, in any sphere of life, without having friends, don’t you know. Perhaps the best thing you could do for this girl would be to apprentice her to some country dressmaker — at Sevenoaks or Tunbridge, for instance; and if she behave well during her apprenticeship you might get one of your friends to engage her as a lady’s maid. I should think that must be better than being a journeywoman dressmaker.’

  ‘What I should like to do is to keep her in the Castle. She could help Tompion in some light kind of work. This morning I began to teach her to read; she is horribly ignorant, but so bright and quick that it is a pleasure to teach her.’

  ‘That would be all very well if you knew her antecedents; but, as you don’t—’

  ‘I have not asked her any questions about her past life; she was so weak and ill when I brought her home. I want her to feel assured of my kindness before I question her.’

  ‘And when you do she may favour you with one of those romances which people in her position are quite capable of inventing. I don’t want to dishearten you, dear, in your effort to do a good work: but this is a matter in which I think you ought to be ruled by your father’s wisdom and experience.’

  ‘Then I’m sure I shall have my own way,’ said Lucille, with a radiant smile. ‘My father never denies me anything.’

  After this they talked of themselves, and Bess was forgotten. Miss Marjoram came in presently — the Maori missionary having proved peculiarly interesting this gray drowsy afternoon — and was intensely surprised to find Bruno established in the morning-room. They dined together; and after dinner Bruno and Lucille went for a moonlight ramble in the park; a ramble about which Miss Marjorum had some qualms of conscience, lest it might be considered a breach of that severe etiquette to which her soul inclined. Two years ago the cousins had wandered together at their own will; for in those days Lucille was counted as a child; but now Lucille was a woman, and the line must be drawn somewhere. Ought it not to be drawn at moonlit rambles? Happily the Earl would be home tomorrow; and this delicate question might be submitted to him.

  Lord Ingleshaw did not return next day. A letter came for Lucille, telling her that the debate in the Lords had been adjourned, and that he would have to stay in Grosvenor Square a few days longer, so as to be ready with his vote. Lucille was to take care of Bruno, and to keep him at the Castle till her father’s return.

  Lucille found no difficulty in obeying these instructions. Bruno found the summer days only too short in his cousin’s company. Poor Miss Marjorum, always bent upon adhering as nearly as she could to her own severe code of etiquette, drove and walked with them in the broiling sun and the treacherous wind until her nose was blistered in the service. But Marjoram’s presence was to them as if it had not been. They were as loving as Romeo and Juliet under her very nose; and there were times when, in these long rustic rambles, Marjorum was fain to sit down on some green bank by the wayside, sheltered by overhanging hawthorn and blackberry, while Bruno and Lucille had the world all to themselves.

  In one of these brief excursions into Paradise the young man caught his cousin suddenly in his arms, among the dancing lights and flickering shadows, under the luminous green of young beech leaves, and held the fair young face upon his breast while he bent to kiss those innocent lips, pleading for the right to call his dearest by a nearer and dearer name than cousin — calling her in advance, in the rapture of that passionate moment, bride and wife.

  ‘Shall it not be so, love? It is the dream of my life!’ he said.

  ‘And of mine,’ she answered.

  Then, after a brief pause, in which they stood silent, lost in a happy dreamland, she said,

  ‘Will my father be angry, Bruno, do you think? I would sooner die than disobey him.’

  ‘Dearest, I have some reason to believe your father will be glad.’

  ‘Then all the world is full of happiness,’ said Lucille; and then, clasping her lover’s arm with a sudden impulse, she exclaimed, ‘O Bruno, let us be kind to the poor! God has been so good to us — so good! And when I think how many unhappy people there are in the world, while—’

  ‘While our lives are steeped in bliss. Yes, it does seem hard, does it not, Lucie? “There’s something in this world amiss, shall be unriddled by-and-by.” That “by-and-by” must seem such a long way off to those who suffer keenly to-day.’

  They went back to the lane where Miss Marjoram was nodding in a placid after-luncheon nap under the shelter of blackberry and hawthorn. They both look so radiant that the spinster’s keen eye divined something out of the common.

  ‘Why, what mischief have you two been plotting?’ she asked.

  ‘Only to set village bells ringing before the blackberries are ripe,’ said Bruno, laughing. ‘Marjy, you will have to give me a wedding-present. Please don’t let it be a Bible or a Church-service, for I am handsomely provided with both.’

  CHAPTER III. FROM SUNSHINE TO GLOOM.

  ‘Who hath not felt that breath in the air,

  A perfume and freshness strange and rare,

  A warmth in the light, and a bliss everywhere,

  When young hearts yearn together?’

  For three days of unbroken unspeakable bliss the lovers dreamed their fond and happy dream. There was not a cloudlet on the brightness of their sky. The very weather seemed made on purpose for them. Never had the chase, or the plantations, the rustic Kentish villages with their quaint old-world air, the ruined abbey with its neatly-kept gardens, and trim mansion-house hard by, the lanes, the meadows, the river — never had that fair English scenery, amidst which Lucille had been born and bred, worn a lovelier aspect. She and Bruno walked and rode and drove and idled about all through the summery days. Except for that one hour which she devoted every morning to the patient instruction of Bess, Lucille’s life was entirely absorbed by her lover. Miss Marjorum felt that the bow must be relaxed a little in favour of lovers newly engaged. She was hourly expecting the Earl’s return; and then things would fall into a more orderly course.

  On the third evening after that exchange of vows in the little wood at the end of the blackberry lane, Lucille sat at her piano, with her lover by her side. She was silent, softly playing a plaintive reverie by Gounod: and it seemed to Bruno that for the last half-hour a strange seriousness had overshadowed her. He could hardly see her face in the light of the low-shaded lamp, but he could see that she was very pale.

  ‘I am afraid you are tired, Lucille,’ he said.

  ‘Rather tired. Perhaps we rode a little too far this afternoon.’

  ‘Not so far as yesterday, sweet.’

  ‘It must have been warmer to-day, then. I feel ever so much more tired. I have a slight sore throat. Don’t look alarmed, Bruno; it will be well to-morrow, I have no doubt.

  ‘Are you subject to sore throat?’

  ‘No, I don’t remember having had one for ages.’

  Bruno got up and rang the bell. Miss Marjorum was writing letters at a distant table. She kept up tremendous correspondences with the friends of her youth — chiefly of the governess profession — and had a vague but comfortable idea that her letters
would be published after her death, and would rank with the compositions of Mrs. Carter.

  Bruno stopped to say a few words to her on his way to the piano. He begged her to send instantly for the family doctor. He had come from Italy, the land of fever, and was quick to take alarm at the faintest symptom of mischief.

  He went back to his seat by Lucille. The girl had been playing all the time, dwelling with a lingering legato touch upon the tender dreamy music.

  ‘Is there anything wrong?’ she asked, seeing her old governess confabulating in a somewhat mysterious way with the footman who answered the bell.

  ‘No, dear; but I know you are more tired than you confess, and I want you to go to bed very early and nurse that sore throat. O, by-the-bye, talking of your protégée’ — of whom they had not been talking—’was there anything the matter with her when you found her in the plantation? I mean, anything beyond weakness and hunger? Was she in a fever?’

  ‘O no,’ answered Lucille; ‘she had been laid up with a fever at the Union, and she was discharged as cured; but having no money and no friends, she wandered about in a starving condition till she fell helpless by the wayside.’

  ‘I see. She had had a fever, and had been cured and discharged,’ said Bruno, with a terrible sinking at his heart.

  He went back to Miss Marjorum, who had laid aside her letter, in the middle of a Johnsonian paragraph, and closed her desk, and who looked the image of trouble. He urged her to get Lucille to her room as soon as possible, but on no account to alarm her. But Lucille’s quick mind had divined her lover’s fears.

  She rose from the piano, shivering and faint, and with an inward conviction that she was going to be ill — she whose brief happy life had been almost free from malady, She went over to Bruno and laid her hand gently on his shoulder, and drew him into the recess of the window, beyond Miss Marjorum’s hearing.