Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon

by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

  For nearly six weeks they lived this happy life. Lord Ingleshaw sometimes joined them for a few days; and on those occasions Elizabeth May fell into the background of their existence, keeping respectfully aloof from the grave gray-bearded elderly man, whom she regarded with deepest awe. They explored every bit of the coast, from Durlstone Head to the Start Point, sometimes spending a couple of nights on board the Urania, until Miss Marjorum grew so familiar with Neptune, that it was a wonder to her to think she had ever been a bad sailor.

  In all these summer days of varying weather Elizabeth never wearied of the sea, whether she sat alone and apart, absorbed in her own thoughts, or joined in the amusements of Lady Lucille and Mr. Challoner. The sea was a source of unfailing delight to her. It was the wildest, grandest thing she had ever seen. Mountain and moorland she knew not, nor prairie, nor forest; the green fields and low hills of Kent were all she had seen of Nature’s grandeur, until she came suddenly face to face with ocean. Her first experience of a tempest was rapture. She stood on deck, lashed and beaten by the rain, buffeted by the wind, and watched the lightning gleaming on the dark leaden waters, and the livid white crests of the waves that seemed to leap up against the blackened sky. She revelled in the tumult of the scene. And the calm summer aspect of the sea was all the more beautiful in her eyes after she had seen the might and horror of the storm.

  The happiest clays must end. September was nearly over. The days were shortening, the evening breezes were growing chill, albeit the noontides were as sunny as midsummer. Bruno was to surrender his command of the Urania in a day or two; and Lucille and her governess were under orders for Ingleshaw Castle, where his lordship had already taken up his abode in readiness for the pheasant-shooting. There was to be no parting between these happy lovers; but their sea-going day were over; and Lucille’s spirit was shadowed by a faint cloud of melancholy at the thought that such blissful days could come to an end.

  ‘I wonder whether we shall ever come to Weymouth again?’ she said, looking dreamily at the picturesque bay from her low luxurious seat on deck.

  ‘I don’t know, love; I think our next yachting experiences should be in more romantic waters — off the Orkneys or the Hebrides.’

  ‘I think I would rather come here again. We can never be happier than we have been here,’ said Lucille softly.

  ‘Yes, yes, we can; our souls may take a higher flight in bolder, grander scenes; we will sail under Italian skies, over the tideless blue of the Mediterranean. I will show you Capri, Paestum, Cyprus; there shall be a perpetual crescendo in our happiness!’

  ‘That cannot be, Bruno; nothing can surpass perfection; and I have been perfectly happy here.’

  ‘You are too logical for me,’ he said, with a faint sigh.

  ‘How wearily you spoke just then!’ exclaimed Lucille, looking at him with sudden anxiety; ‘you have had such a pale and tired look for the last few days, Bruno. I hope you are not ill.’

  ‘Ill? no; I was never better in my life. But there is a certain tameness in this coast; it is just possible for one to have enough of it. I am glad we are going back to Ingleshaw.’

  ‘For the sake of shooting those poor pheasants. What a pity that even the most amiable Englishman should be created with a propensity to murder!’

  This was their last day. They had gone for a long sail, and it was late in the evening when they neared Weymouth, under a full moon.

  This day had not been so perfectly happy as other days. Bruno was tired or out of spirits. Lucille could not tell which. He did not interest himself in the sailing of the yacht, never touching a rope all through the day, he who was usually so active. He lay on a rug at Lucille’s feet, reading a newspaper or talking to her, in a somewhat listless fashion. And now, in the moonlight, he was pacing the little deck, with a restless air that seemed like a rebellion against the marrow space to which he was confined.

  Lucille went down into the cabin to fetch an extra wrap, and stayed there for about a quarter of an hour talking to Miss Marjoram, who was comfortably ensconced on the sofa, placidly digesting a very good dinner. On her return to the deck, Lucille saw Bruno and Elizabeth seated side by side, the girl’s face clearly visible in the bright moonlight — a pale impassioned face turned towards Bruno, with tears streaming down the cheeks. He had his hand on her shoulder, and he was talking to her in a voice so low that it was drowned by the faint plash of the waves, yet with an unmistakable earnestness of manner.

  For a few moments Lucille stood aghast. The passionate imploring look in the girl’s eyes, the attitude of the man, which seemed one of appeal or entreaty — what could these mean except that one hideous treason which would change the colour of Lucille Challoner’s life? She stood as if changed to stone; she felt as if she had suddenly stepped upon the edge of an abyss, saw the black gulf yawning below her, and knew that she must fall into it. Only for a few moments did she stand looking at those two figures in the bows, every line clearly defined in the broad silver light, and then she advanced towards them with a quiet step, and looked at them with a frank and not unfriendly gaze, slow to believe in evil, despite this agony of doubt gnawing her heart.

  ‘Is there anything the matter, Bruno?’

  He had started ever so slightly at her footstep, but he looked up at her now steadily enough, with grave, unabashed eyes, his hand still resting lightly on Elizabeth’s shoulder.

  ‘Only the realisation of my own fear. This girl is not happy in the artificial life she has been leading with us. It does not suit her temper or her temperament. You must find her more occupation, regular duties, a place to fill in your father’s household, or in somebody else’s. This idle ornamental life of ours wearies her.’

  He rose from the bench, leaving Elizabeth sitting there, silent, downcast.

  ‘Is this true, Elizabeth?’ asked Lucille.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then you should have made your complaints to me, and not to Mr. Challoner; he can hardly be expected to understand your feelings,’ Lucille answered, in colder accents than Bruno had ever heard before from her lips.

  ‘What did she say to you, Bruno?’ Lucille asked presently, when she and her lover were standing side by side, out of Elizabeth’s hearing.

  ‘O, I hardly know!’ he answered, with a touch of impatience. ‘Another outbreak of temper like that of which I told you six weeks ago. You have been most unwise in your treatment of her. Instead of being grateful, she is discontented with her position. I warned you against this result, Lucille.’

  ‘How harshly you speak, Bruno! I could not help being fond of the girl: and I did not think she could be ungrateful,’ said Lucille slowly.

  She had hardly recovered from the bewilderment which had seized her at sight of those two figures — the pale face wet with tears, the passionate eyes turned towards Bruno. Her lover’s explanation, given with such a cold matter-of-fact air, went far to satisfy her; but it was not altogether satisfactory. Unused as she was to encounter falsehood, unsuspicious as she was of wrong, she had yet an unhappy feeling, as of one who walks in the dark with a vague sense of danger close at hand. She could hardly see the lamp-lit semicircle of the bay, the white houses gleaming in the moonlight, for the tears that clouded her eyes, tears wrung from her by a nameless agony.

  She hardly spoke to Bruno during the business of landing, and it was only when they were on the doorstep that Bruno found anything to say to her, and then it was but to bid a brief good-night. All their plans were made for the next day — Bruno was to meet them at the station and escort them to Ingleshaw.

  CHAPTER V. A LEAF FROM THE BOOK OF THE PAST.

  ‘Sir, you and I must part, — but that’s not it:

  Sir, you and I have loved, — but there’s not it.’

  IT was the first week in October, and the woods at Ingleshaw were deepening to that sombre green which precedes the glory of the autumnal reds and yellows; the chestnuts had already put on the tawny hue of decay, and the russet leaves fell heavily on the soft g
rass in the avenue; but oaks and beeches held their own yet against the destroyer.

  The gardens were vivid with gaudy autumn flowers; but the roses still bloomed in sheltered places, and the hothouses were full of summer bloom.

  Life at Ingleshaw Castle moved upon more conventional lines than that unceremonious existence on board the Urania. Lucille and her lover no longer spent their days in almost unbroken companionship, albeit they were living under one roof. Lord Ingleshaw was fond of shooting, and expected Bruno to be equally enthusiastic; so these two spent most of their mornings in the woods, with a keeper and a couple of dogs, shooting pheasants in the old-fashioned country-squire or country-parson style.

  Lucille’s aunt, Lady Carlyon, had arrived at the Castle on a visit of indefinite duration.

  ‘I shall stay as long as ever you contrive to keep me amused, my dear,’ she said; ‘so it will be your own fault if I go away soon. Ingleshaw is quite the dullest place I know; but there is a soothing influence in its dulness which always makes me feel better afterwards — like what people say of the Engadine, don’t you know. It’s not that you feel particularly well while you are there, but you find yourself in such splendid health directly you get away.’

  To amuse Lady Carlyon was no light duty. She liked her neice to go to her at half-past eight with her early cup of tea, and read little bits of the newspaper to her before she got up. This helped to awaken her brain, she said. She required company in her morning saunter round the gardens. She wanted her neice’s sympathy with her crewel work, an art which she carried to great perfection, but for which she required a good deal of assistance from other people. She liked to have one of Anthony Trollope’s novels read to her; and she entered warmly into the loves and perplexities of his young people. She liked to hear her favourite bits of Mozart. In fact, she liked to keep Lucille about her in an elegant kind of slavery all day long; while poor Lucille was longing to be trudging through the woods, following the far-off sound of the guns, so as to meet the sportsmen after their morning’s work, and to sit on some grassy bank with them while they ate their picnic luncheon.

  Lady Carlyon professed herself delighted at her niece’s engagement.

  ‘I think I could hardly have done better for you myself, if I had brought you out next season,’ she said. ‘No doubt your father always intended you and Bruno to marry. It is such a comfortable way of adjusting things. Bruno will have the estate, and you will have a good deal of money, without which Bruno would have found it rather difficult to manage.’

  ‘Aunt Ethel, you surely don’t think—’ began Lucille, turning very pale.

  ‘I don’t think that he cares more for the money than for you!’ cried the dowager; ‘of course I don’t. What a silly sensitive child you are! Everybody knows that he adores you; but the money will be very useful to him all the same. It will make it much easier for him to be a good landlord. Nobody ought to depend solely on land nowadays. Your father tells me that you and Bruno are to be married at Ingleshaw Church early in the new year. I should have preferred Westminster Abbey, and the height of the season; the George is a person with whom it is quite useless to argue. He does not intend you to be presented until after your marriage, which will save trouble, he says. What an absurd idea! You ought to have made your hit as one of the beauties of the season before you were married. It would have been a cachet for you when you began your career as a wife. But men have no foresight; and my brother is just forty years behind the age in all his ideas.’

  ‘But I would ever so much rather be married quietly at Ingleshaw than have a grand London wedding, aunt Ethel,’ answered Lucille.

  ‘Well, it will save a good deal of money, and that seems to be all that people of our rank think about nowadays,’ said Lady Carylon contemptuously.

  ‘I am sure that is not my father’s reason,’ said Lucille.

  ‘Perhaps not. Your father was always fond of hiding his light under a bushel. Give him his worm-eaten old books and a quiet corner, and he is content. And now, Lucille, how about your trousseau? It is time you began to see about that.’

  ‘Dearest aunt, when I don’t even know in what month I am going to be married! There is plenty of time.’

  ‘There is never plenty of time where dressmakers are concerned,’ answered Lady Carylon , with authority. ‘I know what the creatures are, and how little trust there is to be put in them. If you want the best people to work for you, you must give them good notice.’

  ‘Why cannot Miss Sanderson make my gowns, aunt? She has done very well for me hitherto.’

  Miss Sanderson was the chief milliner and mantua-maker of Sevenoaks, and was looked up to as a great authority on Paris fashions.

  ‘My child, you have been in the nursery,’ shrieked Lady Carylon ,’ and it did not matter a straw what you wore. But do you suppose Miss Sanderson is the proper person to launch you in society? Half a woman’s success, nowadays, depends on her dressmaker. Your gowns fit you well enough, I allow. It is really wonderful how these country dressmakers contrive to fit so well, when a forty-guinea gown from Regent-street will come home all wrinkles. But it is not enough nowadays that a woman’s gowns should fit. They must be original, daring. Every new gown should be a new departure. I have been reflecting seriously upon this matter, and I have come to the conclusion that your dinner and visiting gowns must be made by Muntzowski.’

  ‘What an extraordinary name! Who is Muntzowski?’

  ‘Quite the newest dressmaker in London. She is a Pole, and a born artist. Forty years ago Balzac declared that the Slavonic temperament was the artistic temperament: but this is the first development of the Slavonic mind in dressmaking. Muntzowski’s gowns are something hors ligne. She has a feeling for colour, an audacity in her outlines, unknown hitherto. Dressed by Muntzowski you will be the rage.’

  ‘Dear aunt, if you knew how little I care about my gowns, beyond wearing the colours Bruno likes best—’

  ‘Don’t affect eccentricity, Lucille. It is every sensible woman’s object in life to be dressed better than her neigh. bours. In what else can a woman of rank surpass the common herd? Can she ever hope to play or sing as well as the people she can hire? Can she paint as well as a professional painter? or sit her horse as well as a country squire a daughter, who only lives to follow the hounds? A woman of fashion cannot afford to fritter away her time upon accomplishments. There are two things in which she ought to be perfect — her gowns and her conversation. I shall take you. up to town next week to see Muntzowski.’

  Lucille laughed at her aunt’s intensity, but promised to do whatever her father desired with regard to that mountain of new clothes which the feminine mind considers indispensable to matrimony. It was natural to her to be gracefully and prettily dressed; and her own artistic taste had always modified the fashions which Miss Sanderson recommended to her notice. To please her father — to please Bruno — had been her highest ambition; and she could not imagine a state of being in which the admiration of the outside world would be of any value to her.

  Lady Carylon heard of her neice’s goodness to Elizabeth May — heard, and disapproved, just as Miss Marjoram had disapproved. She thought the scarlet fever was only a just consequence of Lucille’s folly.

  ‘I only hope it will be a lesson which will make you wiser in the future,’ she said.’ But I am very sorry to find you have kept the ungrateful minx in the house.’

  ‘It was not her fault I was ill, aunt,’ remonstrated Lucille;’ and she nursed me devotedly through my illness.’

  ‘Nursed you devotedly, indeed! Artful hussy! Of course, once having got her nose inside the Castle, she was eager enough to stay. I saw her in the corridor the other day, and I didn’t at all like the look of her. Sly, Lucille, sly. The sooner you get rid of her the better.’

  ‘I am sure you misjudge her, aunt,’ said Lucille, with a troubled look. Her mind had never been clear about Elizabeth since that night on board the yacht.

  ‘I never misjudged any one in my life,’ repl
ied Lady Carylon positively. ‘I always begin by thinking badly of persons of that class; and I have never been disappointed in the result. What are you going to do with that young woman?’

  ‘I intended her to fill Tompion’s place—’

  ‘To take her as your own maid? Absurd!’

  ‘I’m afraid she is too good for that.’

  ‘Too good!’ shrieked Lady Carlyon. ‘A creature rescued from the gutter, who has never been taught hairdressing, and cannot have a notion of altering a gown — a chit utterly without experience! What could she do for your figure or your complexion, if either were to give way suddenly?’

  Lucille did not enter upon these details. She hoped that it would be very long before her toilet became a work of art, like her aunt’s.

  ‘I have changed my mind about Elizabeth,’ she said.’ She is so intellectual, so quick at learning, so superior in all her ideas, that I think she would do better as a governess. She might begin in a very humble way — teaching young children, and carrying on her own education all the while; and by and by she would be fit for a superior situation.’

  ‘O, as a nursery governess — to trudge about country lanes with troublesome children — she might do very well. But that is a way of being buried alive which a young woman with her good looks will not endure long, I’m afraid,’ added Lady Carlyon.

  The return to Ingleshaw had ended the daily, and almost hourly, association between Lady Lucille and her protegee. Lord Ingleshaw’s presence at the Castle altered the manner of his daughter’s life. It was no longer possible for her, had she been so inclined, to have Elizabeth May about her as a companion. Elizabeth fell back naturally into the place which had been at first given to her. She occupied a little room communicating with Tompion’s large and airy chamber. She worked industriously at plain sewing, and did any light housework which Tompion could find for her to do. She attended to the flowers in Lady Lucille’s rooms, and this, of all tasks, seemed her favourite occupation.