Every one likes Roger Temple. He never said an ill word, because he never harboured an ungentle thought of mortal. He is no more conscious than his sister Barbara, who actually thinks him still young, as well as beautiful, that the dew of his youth has quite evaporated, and that it is now drawing toward evening with him. He is soft-hearted and romantic, and, but for his shyness and certain panics that come over him, would have been, no doubt, married long ago.
As it was nearly sunset, and tea early, Miss Barbara was by this time standing at the drawingroom window, which commands a view of the hollow, now glittering its last in the golden evening sun, through which lies the path from Wynderfel.
“I don’t see a sign of them, do you, Bonnie?” This was an ancient, pet name of my friend Roger. “Oh! he’s gone,” she said, looking round, “perhaps to meet them — but no, poor darling, he’s so shy.”
So she looked out again for a time, and then compared her watch with the old French clock over the chimneypiece. It was hardly time yet; but fatiguing as it is, few people can, especially in the rural solitudes, where an arrival is an event, and from a window with a distant view of the hoped-for approach, refrain from watching.
Miss Barbara, whose fingers were tired holding her golden glasses to her eyes, with a little sigh, put them down and turned from the pretty view, and sat down at the piano.
It is an instrument which has seen better days, like the good lady who loves it. It has an old-world air, and its ivory notes have got a mellow golden tint, and are hollowed with a wonderfully long course of Mozart and Handel, and variations interminable, garrulous, circumlocutory, and mazy enough to have unsettled its wits. The little oval landscape over the notes, has lost its youthful complexion, and acquired an antique melancholy tint; the varnish has cracked into all manner of tiny wrinkles, and if you strike a loud chord, and listen, you hear the whole instrument audibly wheeze after the effort.
But to her it is a peerless piano, beloved with the sad yearnings of irrevocable youth; on any other the old music would lose its life and charm; forms gather round it as she plays, and when she ceases, remembered tones murmur in her ear. Maiden sister Barbara had many offers, and might have been well married; but there was one that was not to be. The same music stool, the same little oval landscape, the same music, the same instrument and its reedy chords and faded harmonies, as her thin hand calls them forth in the summer evenings, sound sad and sweet in her ear, as choirs of far-off angels.
When she had played for a while, up got Miss Barbara again, and walked down the hall-door steps and to the little grass-mound, about a stone’s throw to the left, on which she took her stand. The big dog, Drake, got up and shook his ears, and followed her lazily to the point of observation, whence, sitting with cocked ears and sniffing nostrils, he made his official survey also: and flanked on the other side by the splendid old lime-tree that overshadowed them, Miss Barbara, with her golden glasses to her eyes, looked out earnestly for her guests.
“Oh! you’re there!” exclaimed Roger’s kindly voice, approaching, and turning, she saw him with his smile drawing near at a little trot, which subsided to a walk. “I’ve been talking to Dolly in the poultry-yard,” he resumed, as he arrived, a little out of breath, upon the eminence, where Miss Barbara received him with her most attentive look, for he had plainly something to tell, and Drake fidgeted in his place and looked on him kindly, and licked his lips with just the least little tip of his tongue, and brushed the grass back and forward with his tail as he sat, indicating his willingness to give up his place and kiss hands, and make himself generally agreeable, if it were thought desirable. Roger’s countenance darkened with the sad and earnest expression which it always wore when business was approached, and he laid his hand gently on his sister’s wrist— “I’ve just been looking at the two turkeys, Raby dear, and I really think it looks very like pip.”
“Really?.” echoed Miss Barbara.
“I do, indeed, upon my word!”
“Poor things!” exclaimed she; and they looked gravely into one another’s eyes.
Roger shook his head, closed his eyes, and with a little sigh, said:
“It’s a nasty thing, pip.”
“Awful!” said Miss Barbara.
“I can find nothing wrong in their food; I really, Raby, can’t account for it, and I’ve told Dolly what she ought to do, and she’s very careful, you know, and as the food is all right, I hope the others mayn’t take it.”
“I trust not; and sufficient to the day, Bonnie dear,” she replied, brightening up, for she remembered her guests, and she glanced over his wardrobe with approval.
“How handsome you look this evening, Bonnie!” exclaimed his sister, looking at him with a proud smile of affection.
“You must not say that, Raby dear; no, you mustn’t, you make me too conceited; no, Raby, you mustn’t,” replied he, shaking his head and smiling violently.
“I want you to look well tonight, and you know why?” she said with a smile and a nod.
“You’re always quizzing, Raby: there’s nothing, I assure you,” laughed Roger rather sheepishly; “now, really, upon my honour.”
“You want but this, and you’re perfect and she placed a rosebud in his buttonhole.
“Thank you, Raby dear,” he said, with a smile, patting her cheek very gently, “you’re always so pleasant and he kissed her cheek fondly. “But, really, and upon my honour — well, you won’t believe me, you never will, Raby, you’re such a rogue.”
“By the bye, where’s Charlie?” inquired Miss Barbara, suddenly recollecting.
“Gone to fish, I think; he took my rod and flies; but he knows you expect friends, and he’s sure to be home in time.”
“Yes, I’m sure he will, he wouldn’t disappoint us; and I want him and Rachel to see one another; it’s more than three years since they met last,” said Barbara, who was addicted to that romantic school of matchmaking which makes no account of prudence, and had this evening two affairs on her hands — one, the little project she had just suggested; the other, a romance which she had imagined, in which Agnes Marlyn, all unconsciously, and honest Roger Temple, willingly enough, figured as partners.
“Sure never a hall such a galliard did grace!”
It was these romantic situations which quickened her hospitable instincts this evening, and her gentle soul yearned to see them all happy together.
“Here they are, at last!” exclaimed she, joyfully. “Run down, Bonnie, and meet them; fly, darling, and I will go in and ring for tea, and have everything ready by the time you arrive.”
With a throbbing heart honest Roger Temple, at that odd little jog-trot which constituted his mode of “flying,” set forth, and not caring to be unbecomingly blown at his arrival, he subsided, as usual, into a walk, and so smiling gloriously, he approached the two young ladies who were drawing near.
CHAPTER XIV.
CHARLIE MORDANT.
THEIR cheerful welcome over:
“My dear,” said Miss Barbara to Rachel, “I’m so glad I’ve got you here; it was so good of you and Miss Marlyn to come! I told you in my note I had an old friend to meet you; it isn’t Bonnie, of course you understood that. It’s — shall I tell you? Who do you suppose? It’s Charlie Mordant; yes, indeed, came on leave yesterday morning. He’d have gone up to pay his respects at Raby, but I wasn’t quite sure that your papa would wish it. His uncle — I think there was some unpleasantness — was not a favourite of Mr. Shadwell’s; and then Sir Roke Wycherly being his guardian, or patron, or whatever it is, I fancied would not be a recommendation, as I know there had been a coldness there too, and I thought it better we should wait a little and feel our way.”
“I really don’t know, I think, I’m sure papa would have been very happy, and I know mamma would. We had such a charming walk here, everything looking so beautiful, and we stopped for ever so long, did not we, Agnes, at the stile? We admire this pretty place; it looks so wonderfully, just in these tints, and in the sunset light! If
we had brought our pencils and colours we should certainly have stopped there, and made sketches.”
“And spoiled our tea, wicked creatures! But it is pretty, certainly, quite beautiful from some points of view,” acquiesced Miss Barbara. “I’m very glad Miss Marlyn saw it to such advantage. Bonnie darling, show Miss Marlyn the photographs.”
My fat friend skipped to get the book, and placed it before the object of his admiration, and forthwith the ladies began to discuss the “photos” with animation.
“Bonnie dear, you must find my microscopic photo, you know the one I mean,” said Miss Barbara, eagerly. “Yes, thanks; now, here it is, Miss Marlyn; look at it. I’ll give you the magnifier presently. Now, examine it closely; is it a human being, or is it a building, or is it the Ten Commandments, or is it a cow?”
If Miss Marlyn had seen how conscious my fat friend, Roger, looked, she would have had an inkling of the truth, but she was politely scrutinising the atom.
“Oh, no!” cried Miss Barbara, “don’t turn the back; you shall read that afterwards: do you make out anything?”
“It is so wonderfully minute,” said Miss Marlyn, with a pretty frown of puzzle.
“Well, do you give it up?” cried Miss Barbara, with a delighted little signal to Bonnie.
“It looks a little like — is it? — a lighthouse, with the lower part dark, in deep shade, and the upper lighted; is it a lighthouse?”
“Well, what shall I say? It answers some of the purposes of a lighthouse; I’ve found it so, at least; it guides people in uncertainty, and it’s a very fine object, I think, and it is luminous, and looks bright, always; a lofty, symmetrical structure.”
“It can’t be a statue, then?” conjectured Agnes.
“Or a water-spout?” suggested Rachel, who was now peeping over Miss Marlyn’s shoulder.
“No! it isn’t a water-spout; it’s nothing so uncertain, nor a statue, though it might make a very fine one, I think,” answered Miss Barbara.
“It would make a statue! then it is a block of white marble, I guess, with the lower part in shade,” said Rachel.
Roger moved a little, uneasily.
“Well, that’s your guess; and what do you say, Miss Marlyn, you must fix on something — anything, just for a guess,” said Miss Barbara.
“Give her the glass, Raby darling,” murmured Roger, who was in a painful state of bashful excitement, and wished the ordeal over.
“I’ll tell you what I think it is,” said Miss Marlyn, in this sudden light, forgetting her data, “it’s Kemble as Hamlet; the picture in’ the National Gallery, with the skull. I fell in love with it!”
Here Roger changed colour a little, and cleared his voice, as if about to say something.
“Not a word, Bonnie, for your life,” entreated his sister.
“Well that’s your guess, an auspicious guess,” said Miss Barbara, who had been rubbing the little lens in her handkerchief, and now placed it in Agnes Marlyn’s taper fingers.
The young lady took it, applied it, and beheld honest Roger, looking more than commonly fat, in evening costume, with a white waistcoat, and smiling with all his might full in her face. An incredulous little shock for a moment expressed itself in Miss Marlyn’s countenance, and then came an irrepressible fit of laughter.
“It’s a horrid thing,” said poor Bonnie, smiling plaintively. “I know you think it frightful.”
“Tell me, dear Miss Marlyn, what amuses you so much?” inquired Miss Temple, a little anxiously.
“Thinking of our absurd guesses — a lighthouse, a water-spout, a skull in Hamlet’s hand — how dreary and awful! and now it turns out to be something so cheerful and happy,” replied Miss Marlyn; and then added in a sad tone, leaning back in her chair, so that Bonnie only could catch the murmured accents— “so very cheerful and happy, that sad people wonder how it can be so! Don’t you think, Mr. Temple, that people who are always tolerably happy, are a sort of blessed monsters, who have reason to be thankful to heaven, above all others?”
“Yes, indeed!” said honest Roger, affecting a little sigh.
“Then you suffer — you — who seemed to me so lighthearted. You, also, have your secret griefs, like others?”
I am afraid that Miss Marlyn was quizzing him. And Roger, who was one of the serenest and cheeriest of mortals, was led into a silent prevarication, for the good fellow, for a moment, tried to look miserable, and sighed again. But what was he to do? Misery seemed to interest Miss Marlyn, and could he forfeit his chance?
“And what are these initials?” asked Miss Marlyn, changing the subject suddenly, and looking on the back of the photograph— “B. S. T.; they are yours, are they?”
“Yes, Roger — Roger Temple is my name!” said he, with an indescribable softness.
“Roger?” she repeated; “I thought it was Bonaparte! I’ve certainly heard your sister call you Bonaparte, haven’t I?” said Miss Marlyn, cruelly, I am afraid.
“Oh! I think it must have been Bonnie,” said honest Roger, with an ingenuous blush; “an old-pet — I mean nick — name that she is fond of. I call her Raby, still; I do, indeed!”
“Then you were children together!” said the young lady, much interested.
“Yes, indeed; playmates in the nursery,” said Roger, with a sigh, and a smile of innocent sentiment, and his head a little on one side, as people sometimes incline their heads in such fond retrospects.
“Our maid, long ago, used to call Bonaparte, Bony, and I suppose it was that, but I really was quite sure I had heard your sister call you Bonaparte!”
“What about me?” inquired Miss Temple.
“Only a mistake of mine. I’ve been asking the meaning of these initials, and now I know the ‘B’ and the ‘T,’ of course; but what does the ‘S’ mean?” asked Miss Marlyn, innocently.
“Segrave,” said Miss Raby, shortly, and looked very grave.
Roger dropped his eyes, and coughed, and flushed a little, uneasily; and a momentary silence overtook the party.
I only know that, in the baptismal registry, “E. S.” is expounded to mean “Roger Sidebotham.” The calling these names to a helpless infant was, in this case, no wanton cruelty. The old original Roger Sidebotham was a bachelor, a City personage, and East India director, who obtruded himself as poor Bonnie’s godfather, and accompanied the proffer of his spiritual parentage with some mysterious intimations of an intoxicating character.
But he married; and compensated his godson with a cadetship in the Company’s service.
The dream of a million was gone, but the brand of “Sidebotham” clave to him like the leprosy of Naaman the Syrian. It galled him. He hated it. It was one of the very few bitter drops in that pleasant sillabub which filled his cup of life. It certainly is not a pretty name. But he had brooded over it, and grown morbid, and had come to abhor and dread it as a spirit does the cabalistic word that has power to degrade and torture.
It was some relief to him when his sister Barbara, in her indignation, insisted that he should never sign himself “Sidebotham” more, but take instead the name of his admirable uncle, Segrave, who had left him a rentcharge of twenty pounds a year.
Still “Sidebotham” weighed upon him like an evil secret, which, sooner or later, time would bring to light: and thus it was he winced and coloured under Miss Marlyn’s harmless but cruel question.
“Segrave is the second name,” repeated Miss Barbara, who could not endure to leave her little speech, even for a moment, in the attitude of an untruth: “that is, at present; formerly, I mean originally, it was different.”
“Oh!” said Miss Marlyn, turning again with a gentle interest to Roger Temple.
“And what, then, does the initial ‘S’ really mean?”
Miss Marlyn’s question, I have sometimes thought, was pressed with a cruel knowledge of facts.
“Don’t ask, Miss Marlyn — pray don’t!” said honest Roger, very much flurried; and, dropping his voice to the tenderest murmur, he continued: “I must, i
f you desire it: I can refuse you nothing: but you won’t; I can’t describe how it would pain me, I hate the name so much; and I know the effect that names have in prejudicing people. I’ve felt it myself; I know it; I have felt it myself; and I know, if you were to hate it as much as I do, you would always associate me with it: it is such a shabby, odious name. Side— “
He was as near as possible letting it slip out, and looked at her now with his round, innocent eyes in such woeful terror that, in spite of her efforts, she did laugh a tremulous little laugh.
“I don’t understand you, Mr. Temple. What can you mean by that, and looking at me with such an expression? You have really excited my curiosity, and I must know what you mean — really.”
Complete Works of Sheridan Le Fanu (Illustrated) Page 395
