"'Beau nez, dont les rubis ont cousté mainte pipeDe vin blanc et clairet,Et duquel la couleur richement participeDe rouge et violet.'
"'Beau nez, dont les rubis ont cousté mainte pipeDe vin blanc et clairet,Et duquel la couleur richement participeDe rouge et violet.'
"But I am no morning dram-drinker. 'Tis from the teapot I take my noontide inspiration. Yet I know not if bohea be not as fatal to the nerves as Hollands. I have heard that Lord Bristol attributes his son Hervey's ill-health to the use of that detestable and poisonous plant tea. Those were his very words, as told me by no less a person than Lord Hervey's valet, who frequents my favourite tavern. Well, if 'tis poison, 'tis a pleasant poison, and keeps the brain alive while it kills the body. I learnt the habit of bohea-bibbing from a sprig of good family who chummed with me twenty years ago in this very garret. He was a delicate effeminate creature, brought up gingerly by a widowed mother, and then flung upon the world to waste a small patrimony and starve when it was gone."
Durnford put down his cup hastily and stared the speaker in the face.
"A friend of twenty years back!" he said. "What became of him?"
Ludderly shrugged his shoulders, and shook his head.
"I know not, unless he went as sailor or soldier, and flung away a life which he could not maintain as a civilian. He had sunk pretty low when he became my fellow-lodger, and was trying to live by his pen. He had inherited a strong attachment to the King over the water, and wrote on the losing side, a fatal mistake, till he turned his coat at my advice, and scribbled for the Whigs. I am at heart a friend to the Stuarts, but I have got my bread by abusing them. Half my living at one time was made out of Father Peter and the warming-pan."
"How long is it since you saw this gentleman?"
"He disappeared from my ken in the autumn of the year nine, the year of Malplaquet. He left London on a pilgrimage to a wealthy relative in Hampshire, whom he fancied his destitution might move to pity; but I thought that if the gentleman were a man of the world, he was more likely to set his dogs at my poor friend than to take him in and feed him. He was very low by that time, and he had an impediment to a relation's hospitality which I should deem fatal."
"What kind of impediment?"
"A motherless baby of a year and a half old—you need not blush, sir, 'twas born in wedlock—the offspring of a foolish runaway match made abroad, where my friend was bear-leader to a young nobleman."
"By heaven, it is the very man!" cried Herrick. "I thought as much from the beginning. Was not your friend's wife called Belinda?"
"That was her name. Many a night have I heard him utter it, half-strangled in a sob, as he lay dreaming. The poor girl died in childbirth at Montpellier, where they were living for cheapness. What do you know of him?"
"Nothing—except that if he was the man I think, he died on the Portsmouth road, died of want and exhaustion, and was found lying stark and cold, with his baby daughter beside him."
"Do you know the date of his death?"
"Yes, 'twas the twenty-eighth of September."
"And it was on the fifteenth he took his child from her nurse at Chelsea, over against Mrs. Gwynne's Hospital, and started on his wild-goose chase after a kinsman's benevolence. He thought his relative would melt at sight of the child, which shows how little he knew of the world, poor wretch! Doubtless he arrived at his destination, had the door shut upon him, civilly or uncivilly—'twould be the same as to result—and turned his face Londonwards again, to tramp back to his den here, where he knew there was at least shelter for him. He was weak and ill when he left London, and he was all but penniless, and intended to make the journey on foot. I am not surprised that he died on the road. I am not surprised; but even after eighteen years, I am sorry."
Honest Jemmy wiped a tear or two from his unwashed cheek with the back of a grimy hand.
"Where did they find him, sir?" he asked, after a brief silence.
"On Flamestead Common, thirty miles from London."
"He had come all the way from his kinsman's seat on the other side of Winchester. The man was a distant cousin of his father's. 'Twas not a close tie; but common humanity might have afforded him at least a temporary shelter."
"My dear Mr. Ludderly, common humanity is the most uncommon virtue I know of; 'tis rarer than common sense. Pray let me hear more of your friend. Did he ever tell you of his wife's family and origin?"
"Very little. He was strangely silent about her, and as I knew he lamented her death with an intensity of grief that was singular in a young widower, I shrank from irritating an open wound by any impertinent questions. All I ever heard of the lady is that she was an Italian, and that if she had had her rights she would have enjoyed a handsome fortune. It is my private opinion that he stole her from her father's house, and so blighted her chance of wealth and favour."
"You do not know where they met, or where they were married?"
"No; I cannot tell you the where, but I have heard the how. They were united by an English parson whom Chumleigh met on his travels; a scamp, I take it, of your Parson Keith stamp. They were married in the house of a British consul. 'Twas a legal ceremonial; the knot could scarce have been more securely tied. Unhappily Death snapped it before the rich father could relent."
"Were pardon likely upon his part, surely the widower would have sued for it for the sake of his motherless infant?"
"Whether he sued and was refused, or never sued at all, I know not," answered Ludderly; "the man could hardly have been more secret than he was about his wife's history."
"Was he a friend of long standing?"
"No; he and I were only poverty's strange bedfellows. I picked him up one night sleeping under an archway in Holborn, penniless, dispirited, and took him home to my garret. I saw that he was a gentleman and a man of parts. I was just rich enough to give him a shelter from the wind and rain, and a supper of bread and cheese, and I had just influence enough to get him a little journeyman's work in the way of translation, as I found he was a linguist. 'Twas the year I brought out myAdventures of Fidelia, a Young Lady of Fortune, modelled upon Mrs. Manly'sNew Atalantis. 'Twas one of my prosperous years, and I would have kept that poor devil all the winter, could he but have pocketed his independence, and been content to share my loaf. But when I could get him no more work he grew restless and impatient, and nothing would serve him but he must go off to try his luck with his Hampshire relation. I doubt what pierced him sharpest was that he could not pay the nurse at Chelsea, and she was growing clamorous, and bade him provide otherwise for his orphan. That decided him, and he trudged off one fair September morning with the little girl nestling on his shoulder. I bore him company as far as Putney village, and there parted with him, little thinking 'twas for ever."
"He may have been more communicative to the child's nurse than to this friendly babbler," thought Durnford; and then he asked the nurse's name, which Ludderly happened to remember, because it reminded him of his favourite paper theTatler, at that time being issued thrice weekly, and its wit and humour in all men's mouths.
"The creature's name was Wagstaff," he said, "which puts me in mind of Isaac Bickerstaff and his lucubrations. I had thoughts of starting a journal upon the same model, and flatter myself that with a smart fellow like Philter to help me, as Addison helped poor Dick, I could have run theTatlerhard. But I could not budge for want of capital. Your printer is such an inquisitive devil, always eager to see the colour of his employer's money."
"Her name was Wagstaff," repeated Durnford, not even affecting an interest in Mr. Ludderly's blighted ambitions, "and she lived at Chelsea, facing the Hospital for old soldiers?"
"Lived, and lives there to this day, for aught I know to the contrary," answered Ludderly.
"My dear sir, I am deeply beholden to you for so much information given with such friendly frankness. We must see more of each other. Will you dine with me at the Roebuck at four this afternoon, or will you honour me with your company at Drury Lane to seeThe Conscious Lovers, and sup at White's after the play?"
Herrick knew that to a man of Ludderly's stamp a dinner or a supper is ever a welcome attention.
"The play and the supper, by all means. I revel in the select company at White's, and though I am no gamester, there is an atmosphere in a place where they play high that flutters my breast with an emotion akin to rapture. I feel all the fever of the players without their risks."
"Mr. Ludderly, you are at once a wit and a philosopher. I shall look for you in the box-office at six o'clock. Till then, adieu."
Durnford hurried off, delighted to be free until evening. He had to go down to the House at three o'clock. There was no measure of importance in hand, but as a tyro he was eager to watch the progress of the session. He could not afford to neglect politics even for a day, but he was bent on discovering Belinda's nurse as early as possible.
It was not quite one by the clock in the newly-finished church of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, which stood out spick and span in all the brightness of stone and marble not yet discoloured by London smoke or London weather. He set out to walk across St. James's Park and the Five Fields to Chelsea, and was in front of the Hospital within an hour. Chelsea had a pleasant rustic air, a country road thinly fringed with houses. The village was a holiday resort for the idle, famous for its Bun House, and for Barber Salter's museum of curiosities. Facing the broad open space in front of the Hospital, and at some considerable distance from that new and handsome edifice—begun by Charles II., but only finished under William and Mary—there was a row of old-fashioned cottages, including two or three of the humblest kind of shops. The corner house nearest the country was adorned with a sign setting forth that Mary Wagstaff, widow, was licensed to sell tea and tobacco; and the unpretending lattices exhibited a small assortment of elecampane, peppermint, clay pipes, pigtail tobacco, peg-tops, battledores, worsteds, and red-herrings.
"If Mary Wagstaff be not gathered to her fathers, and yonder sign the inheritance of a stranger, I am in luck," thought Durnford.
A gray-haired matron of obese figure waddled out of a little parlour at the back of the shop on the summons of a cracked bell which dangled from the half-door. Herrick did not waste time upon preliminaries, but at once stated his business.
Was the obese lady Mrs. Wagstaff? Yes. Did she remember a certain Mr. Chumleigh who left an infant girl at nurse with her nineteen years ago?
This question was like the opening of a sluice. Mrs. Wagstaff let loose a torrent of angry speech, which sounded as if she had been brooding upon her wrongs for all those nineteen years, and had never till this moment relieved herself by uttering them. Yet doubtless she had treated her gossips to many a lengthy disquisition upon the same theme over a supper of tripe or cow-heel.
"Well do I remember him, and with good cause," she began. "An arrant swindler as ever lived, yet with all the grand airs of a fine gentleman. And the care I took of that baby! and the money I laid out upon bread and milk to feed it!"
"But did Mr. Chumleigh never pay you anything?"
"O, he brought me dribs and drabs of money sometimes—a crown-piece or a half-guinea once in a way. There was never such a pauper; he looked half-starved; and would come with his long face and paltry excuses, when I had kept his brat till my patience was worn out—she was a sweet child, I will not deny, and I was very fond of her."
Mrs. Wagstaff rambled on with an air of being inexhaustible in speech, and Herrick listened with admirable patience. He wanted to hear all that she could tell him about the child's father, and was therefore content to listen to a great deal of extraneous matter respecting the nurse and her charge's infantine maladies.
"Ah, and bad work I had with her, for she was cutting her teeth all the time, and used to keep me awake night after night, walking up and down with her and singing to her. But she throve with me wonderful, and she was a fine healthy baby as ever was, though I doubt she'd been ill-used before she came to me."
"Ill-used, do you think?"
"Yes, sir, that was my very word, and I'm not going to take it back again," answered Mrs. Wagstaff defiantly. "I don't mean that her father ill-treated her, or her mother; but the poor little thing had been put out to one of those French nurses," with ineffable disgust, "a nice pack of trumpery, no better than your Leaguer ladies for morals. Mr. Chumleigh told me how he found out that the hussy who suckled his child was no better than she should be, and drank like a fish. And one night that she was nursing the baby, and making believe to rock it to sleep, when she was half asleep herself with Burgundy wine, she tilted her chair forward a little too far and tumbled over into the fire, baby and all, she did. The nurse was burnt worse than the child, and it's a wonder she lived to tell the tale: but the baby struck her poor little shoulder against a red-hot iron bar, and if she's alive she carries the scar to this day. 'Twas a deep brand just where the arm joins the shoulder, and I take it 'twill never wear out."
"How long was the little one with you?"
"Between nine and ten months. I kept her as long as I could, but my poor husband was living at that time, and he was a man of his word. Mr. Chumleigh was to pay me three-and-sixpence a week for the child, and he owed me over three pounds, when my good man lost patience, and threatened to throw the child into the street if I didn't get rid of it civilly. I was to deliver it back to its father, or take it to the constable. So I had no help but to tell Mr. Chumleigh he must fetch the child away, and I told him so point-blank the next time he came to see the little one. He was shabbier than ever, poor soul, and he looked pinched and hungry. I'd rather have offered him a dinner than flung his child upon his hands, but my good man was sitting in the parlour there, listening to every word I said; so I just told Mr. Chumleigh I could hold out no longer, he must just take the child and go about his business. He looked very sorrowful, and then he seemed to recover himself in a minute, and threw up his head with a proud air, as if he had been a nobleman. 'Very well, Mrs. Wagstaff,' he said: 'I grant you have been ill-treated, but it might have been better if you'd had more patience with me. Fortune must turn at last for the most miserable of us. I've a rich relation in the country. I must plod down to him and ask for a home for my motherless one. Sure he can't resist these sweet eyes.' I was almost crying when he shook hands and bade me good-bye, though I tried to be hard with him. 'If ever I can pay you my debt, madam, be sure I will,' says he; and so he went out at that door, with the child cooing in his arms, and I never saw more of him from that day to this."
"And never will, madam, on this side of Eternity," said Herrick gravely; "the poor creature sank upon that cruel journey on which your husband sent him."
"O sir, don't blame my husband! Remember, the poor gentleman owed us over three guineas. 'Tis a good deal for people in our station."
"Yet I'll warrant you had a few guineas in a stocking somewhere. 'Twould not have broken you if you had kept the child a little longer."
"No, sir, I don't say that it would have broken us—"
"Then it must go hard with you to remember how cruelly you dealt with an unfortunate gentleman. But I am not here to reproach you, madam. I came for information, and I thank you for having given it me so freely."
He tried to learn more of Chumleigh's character and circumstances, but here Mrs. Wagstaff's information was of the most limited order. The broken-down gentleman had been singularly silent about his past life. Mrs. Wagstaff only knew that he was a gentleman, and this knowledge she had by intuition, not being versed in the ways of gentlefolks, but finding in this one something that was not in the commonality.
Herrick went back to London feeling very well satisfied with his morning's work, though it would not seem that he had learnt much from nurse Wagstaff.
"There is at any rate the means of settling one doubt," he told himself, as he walked back by the Five Fields, a place of unhappy notoriety as a favourite duelling-ground; and duelling was still a prevailing fashion, though Steele and Addison had done their best to write it down in theTatler, and though the mutual murder of the Duke of Hamilton and Lord Mohun in Hyde Park had not long ago given a shock to polite society.
The tamest lover would hardly endure prolonged severance from his mistress without making some efforts to see her, were it but for the briefest space; and although Herrick did not intend to steal the heiress from her father's custody, he was, on the other hand, determined not to languish in perpetual absence. By fair means or foul he must contrive a meeting; and he had by this time placed himself on such a friendly footing with the gardener's wife, Mrs. Chitterley, that he was sure of allegiance and help from all her family. So, one fair May morning, there came a pedlar, with his pack of books on his shoulders and a stout oak sapling in his hand, thick shoes whitened by dust, a shabby suit of linsey woolsey, and brown worsted stockings—a pedlar of swarthy complexion, and eyes obscured by green spectacles in heavy copper rims. The pedlar turned into the lodge at Fairmile before approaching the house, and conversed for some minutes with Mrs. Chitterley, who was very much at her ease with him; for scarcely had he spoken three words before she discovered that this dusty hawker was the London gentleman, Lord Lavendale's friend, who had been so liberal in his bounties to her and her children.
"You knew my voice, Mrs. Chitterley; but do you think the good people up at the house yonder will recognise me?"
"Not unless they hear you talk, sir; I took you for a stranger when you came in at the door just now. I never dreamt 'twas you."
"And now if I were to change my voice, and speak so?"
He had excelled as a mimic in days gone by, and now he adopted the manner of an old college chum, whose peculiar utterance he had been wont to imitate.
"Lord, sir, nobody will ever know you if you talk like that!"
"Then I'll venture it. But I hope to find Mrs. Bosworth in the garden with hergouvernante, and then I need not go to the house at all."
"She almost lives in the garden, sir, this fine weather."
"Then I'll try my luck," said Herrick, shouldering his pack, which he had brought from no further than Lavendale Manor, where he had put on his pedlar's clothes and stained his complexion. He tramped along the avenue, struck off to the right hand before he reached the house, and made his way by a by-path to a little gate in a holly hedge, by which he entered the garden. All Squire Bosworth's old family plate was laid up in safe keeping at his goldsmith's, and the approaches to Fairmile Court were not over-jealously guarded. Herrick knew his way about the gardens. He had walked there last summer in the sweet sunset leisure of after dinner, when he and Lavendale were the Squire's honoured guests, Mr. Bosworth never suspecting that his lordship's companion could be his rival. He knew all Irene's favourite nooks and corners, and where to look for her.
He found her sitting under a cedar which Evelyn of Wootton had planted with his own hands, an enduring evidence of that accomplished gentleman's friendship for Squire Bosworth's grandfather. She was not alone, but, instead of her usual companion and governess, she had Mrs. Bridget, the nurse, who was sitting on a little wooden stool, knitting a stocking, while Irene sat on the grass close by, with an open book in her lap.
Now it happened that, next to Irene herself, Bridget, the nurse, was the person whom Herrick most ardently desired to see.
"Can I sell you a book, ladies?" he began in his feigned voice, standing a little way off, and opening his pack. "Here isGulliver's Travels, the most wonderful book that was ever written, the book all the great folks in London were mad about last winter; and here isRobinson Crusoe, andThe History of the Plague, and—"
But Irene had started, to her feet. Disguise his complexion, hide his eyes, alter his voice as he might, she knew him. She would have known him anywhere, and under even stranger conditions. The electricity of true love flashed from his soul to hers.
"Herrick!" she cried, "it is you!"
Mrs. Bridget also rose with a troubled air; but Irene laid a restraining hand upon her nurse's arm.
"You won't tell anybody, you'll let us talk to each other a little while?" she pleaded; and then in her most caressing manner, "you can hear all we say. I have no secrets from you, dear old Bridget."
"I'll warrant Mrs. Bridget would hardly swear so much on her side," said Herrick, with a lurking significance in his tone. "When people come to your nurse's age, Irene, they are apt to have a secret or two, be they ever so honest."
"Nay, I'll vouch for it, my Bridget has no secrets from me," protested the girl, hanging on her nurse's ample shoulder.
The nurse turned and kissed her darling, but answered not a word.
"And so you knew me at once, Irene; what an eagle eye you have!"
"If you had come as a blackamoor, I should have known you just as easily," she answered gaily; "and to change your voice too, and speak in those queer gruff tones, and think to cheat me! What a foolish person you must be!"
They seated themselves side by side on a rustic bench, while Bridget resumed her stool and her knitting at a discreet distance.
"What has become of your governess?" asked Herrick.
"She had letters to write to her relations in France—a married sister, and half a dozen nephews and nieces, who live in the south and whom she dearly loves, though she has not seen them for ages. So I made her stay indoors to write her letters, and brought Bridget for my companion. My father has given strict orders that I am to be looked after, lest you should find your way to me. But of all people, Bridget is the one I can trust most confidently. She would cut off her head if she could make me happy by losing it. And now, tell me everything about yourself, more even than your dearest letters can tell. Remember how long it is since we last met."
"Do I ever forget, love? ever cease to count the days and hours that we are doomed to live apart?"
And then he told her his successes, his dreams and hopes, the ever-strengthening hope of independence, Sir Robert's favour and friendship, the world's growing esteem.
"In two years, at most, Irene, I count upon being able to offer you a home; but it will be a very poor home compared with this, and you will sacrifice a great fortune if you become my wife."
"I have told you before that I do not value fortune."
"Yes; but shall not I be ungenerous to accept so vast a sacrifice?"
"It will be no sacrifice. I tasted all that wealth can give last winter in London, and I found no pleasure in fine clothes or fine company, dances and dinners, except when you were near. I know what the great world is like, and can renounce it without a sigh. But I should like to wander with you in that wide beautiful world of mountains, and lakes, and strange foreign cities, which so few people seem to care about. All the people I met last winter used to talk as if there were no world beyond Leicester Fields and St. James's Park—nothing worth living for but cards and fine company."
"Foolish people, Irene, in whom all natural impulses are stifled by the close atmosphere of a Court. Yes, we will travel, dearest, when you are my wife. I will show you some of the loveliest spots on this earth; yet we will not be mere vagabonds, love; we will not spend our lives in exile. This little island of ours is worth living in, and worth working for. We will have our cottage at Chelsea, or our lodgings in London, as you shall decide; and it shall be your task to fan the flame of ambition and stimulate your husband to perseverance and earnestness. For the man who is ambitious and persevering there can be no such thing as failure."
"Let us live in London," said Irene, delighted with a discussion which seemed to bring their future union nearer. "For in London we need be seldom parted. I shall hate even the House of Commons if it takes you from me too often or too long at a time."
"Then we will have a lodging in Spring Gardens, where I can run backwards and forwards, and spend my life between the senate and my home."
Childish talk, when union was still so far off; but it was a kind of talk which made Herrick intensely happy, for it gave him the assurance of winning his sweetheart for a wife, even though Parson Keith had to wed them. She who was so willing to fling away fortune for his sake would not let him languish for ever under her father's ban. The day must come when she would be ready to forsake that stern father for her lover's sake. It was for him to make their union easy, by the assurance of a modest competence.
When they had fully discussed their future dwelling, even to the style of the furniture and the prospect from the windows, Herrick began to question Irene about the companion of her infancy, the waif from whom death had parted her so early.
"I can remember very little," she said. "It is mostly dim, like a dream. Yet there are hours that I can recall. I have but to close my eyes, and her face comes back to me, smiling lovingly, so gentle, so sweet. She must have been fairer than I—I remember a face like alabaster, with rosebud lips, and hair like pale gold. I have seen just such a face in pictures of angels. I remember playing with her under yonder cedar. It was one of our favourite spots. And I remember hide-and-seek in the old stables the day we both caught the fever. How happy we were that day! and it is the last I can remember of our play or our happiness. Perhaps I should remember much more if I had not had that terrible fever; for my cousins have told me how vividly they can recall their childhood. Mine seems like a picture half rubbed out, with distinct patches left here and there upon the canvas."
"Mrs. Bridget must remember your little companion," said Herrick, glancing at the nurse. "Will you call her here, Rena? I should like to ask her a few questions."
Irene beckoned, and Bridget came over to the bench.
"I have been talking of the little girl who died, Mrs. Bridget," began Herrick, with a friendly air. "It has happened to me very curiously within the last few days to come upon traces of that infant's father, and of the first year of her life. Now, I know you were very fond of her, and that you must be interested in anything that relates to her."
Without a moment's warning nurse Bridget began to cry. Rena made her sit down between them, and dried her tears, and soothed her with sweetest caresses.
"Why should you be so broken-hearted about her, you poor old dear soul?" she said; "you were never unkind to her, I am sure."
"No, I was never unkind to her—I have not that upon my conscience," sobbed Bridget; "but I have never forgotten her pretty face and her sweet little ways, and how loving she was to me, dear soul. And to hear of her suddenly—O sir, what did you discover about the poor man who was found dead on Flamestead Common?" she asked, recovering herself with an effort.
"I heard that he was a man of good birth, by name Chumleigh. I heard some particulars of his youth and his marriage, and I mean to find out more. Having got so far upon the traces of his history it will hardly be difficult to learn the rest."
"But what good will it do to any one, sir," asked Bridget, "since the child has been dead so many years? There is nobody to profit by your knowledge."
"Who can say as much as that, Mrs. Bridget? Knowledge is power. I should like to know the history of Mrs. Bosworth's little companion. It pleases me to think that she was something better than a beggar's brat—a child of good birth, and, for all I know, entitled on the mother's side to a large fortune."
Bridget became suddenly alert and interested.
"A fortune did you say, sir?" she exclaimed. "Do you mean that my darling had a right to a fortune?"
"I have reason to believe the child's mother had at least the expectation of wealth; but it was contingent upon the caprice of a rich father: just like your mistress's fortune, which she may lose if she disobey the Squire."
"They all said he was a gentleman," remarked Bridget musingly. "I have heard Farmer Bowman talk about him many a time—he was thin and wasted with hunger, the farmer said; but he had been a handsome young man, and his clothes were a gentleman's clothes, though they were worn almost to rags."
"Were there any papers found upon him?"
"Yes, the Squire brought home a parcel of papers; but there was nothing among them all to show who he was. I have heard my master say as much."
"Well, it will be my business to find out Mr. Chumleigh's relatives, and from them I may hear all about his marriage. I have seen the woman who had care of his motherless baby till within a fortnight of the time she was brought into this house."
"Indeed, sir! That is very strange."
"Strange indeed, Mrs. Bridget; but this world of ours is a much smaller place than we think."
"The mother was dead then, sir?"
"Yes, the mother died directly after the child's birth."
"And had the woman been good to her, do you think?"
"Fairly good, I take it; but her first nurse, the woman who took her from her dying mother's breast, was a careless unworthy wretch."
"As how, sir?"
"An accident of which I was told would prove as much."
Bridget was thoughtful, but did not inquire the nature or the history of this accident. The recollection of her lost charge seemed to be full of trouble to her.
Herrick said no more about Mr. Chumleigh or his child. He had said all he intended to say, and had keenly watched the effect of his revelations upon nurse Bridget. And now it was time for him to leave this paradise, lest some servant should pass that way and take note of his presence, or lest Mademoiselle should come in quest of her pupil. Rena had been glancing uneasily towards the house, momently expecting the apparition of hergouvernante.
"Wilt thou walk with me as far as the old boundary, dearest, where I have spent so many a happy half-hour?" pleaded Herrick; "Mrs. Bridget will keep guard while you go."
"It is near dinner-time, but I will venture," answered Rena, "at the risk of a scolding."
They rambled together under the interlacing boughs, down to the old trysting-place, and before they parted Herrick urged Rena to meet him there now and then, were it only for five minutes' talk stolen from her gaolers.
"I can usually contrive to send you a line by our juvenile friend at the lodge," he said. "He is a serviceable little fellow, and has a precocious sympathy with true lovers. You can hardly be so close watched that you could not steal this way in your rambles."
"My father has given strict orders against my going out alone," said Irene, "but Ma'amselle is not a jealous guardian, and I might slip away from her on some pretext or other—though it seems cruel to cheat such a trustful duenna."
And so they parted, with the understanding that when Herrick was next at Lavendale Manor they should contrive a meeting in the old spot, endeared to them by the remembrance of their first chance encounter and many a subsequent rendezvous. It would not be often that Herrick would have such an opportunity, for he had his battle of life to fight, and business would chain him to London and his solitary lodgings at the back of Russell Street.
Herrick went back to London that evening. Lavendale was in Bloomsbury Square, and would have had his familiar friend and companion to live with him there if Herrick would have consented; but Herrick was sternly resolved upon a life of hard work and almost Spartan plainness. He was filled with ambition, with that keen desire of success for the sake of a loved object, with that same generous unselfishness which made Steele so happy, when he had earned a handful of guineas, to cast them into the lap of his "dearest Prue." So he refused to leave his two-pair lodging in the alley near Button's; and he worked on with an honest purpose which made success a foregone conclusion. But in spite of the close occupation of his parliamentary duties and his work as a journalist, Mr. Durnford found time to travel by heavy coach to Winchester, whence a hired horse conveyed him to the mansion of Sir John Chumleigh, a county magnate, and chief representative of an ancient Tory and High Church family, a gentleman whose grandfather had bled and died for the King in the Civil War, and whose father had held himself sullenly aloof from the Dutch usurper, and had lived and died on his own estate. The present Sir John Chumleigh was a sportsman and an agriculturist; lived only for farming and fox-hunting, and despised all the other interests and ambitions of mankind. He had married the daughter of a needy nobleman, a fine lady who had been slowly fretting herself to death amidst the rude plenty of a rural establishment for the last twenty years, and was a wonder to all her neighbours inasmuch as she was still alive.
To this gentleman Mr. Durnford presented himself one sunny afternoon.
He found the Baronet in a panelled parlour, seated at a table covered with documents of a business character. Sir John was big and burly, wore leather breeches and top-boots in winter and summer, and had all his clothes cut in a style which suggested the hunting-field rather than the drawing-room. He was a man who would start in the winter starlight, before the first ray of dawn had begun to glimmer in the eastern sky, in order to ride fifteen miles to a meet. He had a couple of packs, a magnificent stud of hunters, hunted four times a week, and considered every guinea squandered which was not spent upon kennel or stable. He was prouder of being master of hounds than he would have been of being Prime Minister. Herrick glanced at the whip-racks, the rows of spurs, the vizards and brushes, which adorned the walls, and at once understood the kind of man with whom he had to deal, and he was prepared to encounter a frank off-hand incivility rather than hypocritical courtesy.
He stated his business briefly.
"I have a very particular reason, sir, for being interested in the history of a member of your family who fell upon evil fortunes, and died young, leaving a motherless infant behind him."
"My good sir, my family tree has spread deuced wide since the Chumleighs—an old Norman race—first took root in the land; and if you expect me to give information about every beggarly twig that has withered upon it within the last half-century—"
"This gentleman I take to have been a somewhat near relation, Sir John, since it was to you he turned in the hour of his direst necessities."
"Yes, sir, they all do that: they go to a well-to-do relative as naturally as an old dog-fox goes to ground."
"Do you remember a cousin who came to you in the year nine—'twas in the autumn, shortly after Malplaquet—with a little girl, a mere baby—"
"I'm not likely to forget the fact, sir. What, a trumpery third or fourth cousin to come to my house, with a squaller of eighteen months old, expecting to be housed and fed for an indefinite period; since, having once found comfortable quarters, that kind of vagrant would not be inclined to resume his march in a hurry! It was as much as I could do to be barely civil to that idle vagabond; but I mastered my indignation so far as to offer him a substantial meal, which he refused, and a guinea, which he flung to the footman who showed him the way out—"
"Preferring to tramp back towards London with an empty stomach rather than to feed on your charity," said Durnford; "a false pride, no doubt, sir, but there are men who would die rather than accept a reluctant favour. Your hospitable offer was the last chance of a meal your kinsman had, for he died of starvation on the road to London, and his orphan was adopted by one Squire Bosworth, a landed gentleman at Fairmile in Surrey."
"How do you know that he died of want, sir?" asked Sir John, somewhat dashed in his spirits.
"O sir, the fact is notorious;" and then Durnford related those two chapters of Chumleigh's story which he had heard from Mr. Ludderly and the nurse at Chelsea, and from Mrs. Bridget and others at Fairmile.
"Well, sir, 'tis a pitiful tale," said the Baronet, "but there is hardly a man in England rich enough to provide for all his poor relations. The lean kine would eat up all the fat kine, sir, if mistaken benevolence were to attempt the task, and the kingdom would be reduced to a dead level of poverty. Gad's curse, sir! everybody would be paupers. There would be no green spot in the desert. 'Tis sounder wisdom and truer benevolence in the rich to keep their estates together, to maintain a good household, feed their dependents, and uphold trade. However, I am sorry this misguided young man came to a scurvy end."
"Dare I ask why you call him misguided, sir?"
"Because he made the vast mistake of trying to live by his wits, instead of by some steady and honest industry—because he thought to make his living by hanging about London, sitting idle in coffee-houses, and picking up stray notions from the town wits—Dryden, Congreve, Wycherley, Addison, Steele, and the rest of 'em—to retail secondhand in the newspapers at a penny a line. Better to have carried a musket or swept a crossing. And then when he was bear-leader and earning handsome wages, with the run of his teeth at the best inns on the Continent, and a coach-and-six to carry him all over Europe—an education which should have made him as good a writer as that Mr. Addison whom people thought so much of—he must needs spoil all his chances by running off with a girl out of an Italian convent, and causing a fine hubbub among the priests."
"Was the lady a cloistered nun?" asked Durnford eagerly.
"Why no; 'twas said she was but a boarder or pupil in the convent, handsomely paid for by a wealthy father, who kept so much in the dark as to his daughter that she may be said to have been nameless, and 'twas shrewdly guessed she was the offspring of some low intrigue whom the father was glad to hide within convent-walls, in the hope she would take the veil and rid him of all trouble about her."
"Since you heard so much, Sir John, you must have heard the father's name?"
"There you are out in your reckoning, sir. My only information came by a sort of explanatory letter which my foolish cousin sent me—having a kind of deference for me as the head of the family—soon after his marriage."
"Would you oblige me so far as to let me see that letter, sir, which I make no doubt you have preserved?" asked Durnford.
"Nay, young sir, you go somewhat fast. Will you do me the favour to explain by what right you would grope in the mystery of Chumleigh's life and marriage? What interest can my dead kinsman have for you, a stranger, that I should let you pry into the scandals of his mistaken youth?"
"I will be plain with you, Sir John. My interest in Mr. Chumleigh arises indirectly. His orphan daughter, who died of a fever at the age of five, was the beloved playfellow of a young lady whom I hope to make my wife. It is for her sake I am curious about your kinsman's history."
"'Tis a roundabout sentimental kind of interest, sir, which, were you less of a gentleman, I should feel devilishly indisposed to gratify," said Sir John. "Pray may I ask, sir, who and what you are? for your name, though it has a respectable sound, gives me no information on that point."
"To begin with, then, Sir John, I belong to that fraternity of scribblers to which you object. Without being exactly a haunter of coffee-houses, I have a profound reverence for the shades of Dryden and Addison, whose bodily presence was once familiar at Wills's and at Button's—indeed 'twas Mr. Addison who gave the vogue to the latter house, which is kept by an old servant of Lady Warwick's; and as for wits in the flesh, I have ever hung with delight upon the discourse of Congreve and Swift, Pope and Gay. Yes, Sir John, I too am that low thing, a man who lives by his brains; but I have another profession besides that of scribbler."
"May I know your secondary occupation, sir?"
"I have the honour to represent the borough of Bossiney in his Majesty's Parliament."
"Indeed, sir! You are in the House, are you? And I'll warrant you are an arrant Whig."
"I hope, Sir John, that will not prejudice you against me."
"Nay, Mr. Durnford, I have ceased to be a partisan. There was a time when I was a red-hot Jacobite, and looked to Harley and St. John to open the Queen's eyes to her duty as a daughter and a sister, and so, without violence or damage to the country, to bring in King James III. so soon as the throne should be vacant. But when I saw how easily Harley and St. John were beaten, and how quietly the country knuckled under to a middle-aged foreigner who could not speak a word of our language; and when that miserable flash in the pan of the year fifteen showed me how feeble a crew were the Jacobites of England and Scotland—faith, sir, the best man among them was Winifred Countess of Nithisdale—I began to think that I had better stay at home, and hunt my hounds and keep clear of politics. Neither party has ever benefited me; and I say with the gentleman in the play which the Winchester Mummers acted last Easter, 'A plague on both your houses!' So Whig or Tory is all as one to me, Mr. Durnford. And now will you crack a bottle of Burgundy, or will you drink a glass or two of Malaga, after your long ride?"
Sir John had talked himself into a good temper, and Herrick thought that he might drink himself into a still more gracious humour, so frankly accepted his offer of a bottle; whereupon the butler brought a massive silver tray with decanters of Burgundy and Malaga, and a dish of crisp biscuits, made after a particular recipe which had been in the family from the time of Queen Bess, who had lain at Chumleigh Manor in one of her innumerable peregrinations, whereby she had laid upon the family the burden of for ever preserving the antique furniture and cut velvet hangings of the room in which her royal person had reposed. Charles II. had been a more frequent visitor, putting up at Chumleigh on several occasions when his Court was quartered at Winchester for the hunting in the New Forest, and when he and his favourites had hunted with the Chumleigh foxhounds. Sir John prattled of those glorious days as he sipped his Malaga, which was a fine heady wine.
He sipped and prosed, describing those great days in which royalty had hunted with his father's foxhounds and drunk of his father's wines, and finally talked himself into such an expansive temper that he pressed Herrick to put up at Chumleigh Manor for the night, and leave Winchester by the coach which started at eight next morning. This offer Mr. Durnford thought it wise to accept, as it might afford the opportunity for getting better acquainted with the history of the Chumleigh family, and that Philip Chumleigh in whose fate he was so keenly interested.
It was dusk by this time. The Baronet had dined at three, and he was in for an evening's good-fellowship.
"Her ladyship will take it ill if we do not go to the drawing-room for a dish of tea," he said; "but we can come back to my study afterwards, and I'll show you my kinsman's letter, and as many memorials of the house of Chumleigh as you may care to look at. Our pedigree is more interesting than that of most county families, for the Chumleighs have married into several noble houses. We are an historical race, sir."
The drawing-room was on the other side of a large hall, paved with black and white marble, and with a lantern roof, after Inigo Jones. It was a spacious and handsome apartment, hung with old Italian pictures of manifest worthlessness, interspersed with portraits of the house of Chumleigh by Holbein, Vandyke, Lely, and Kneller. The present owner and his wife had been painted by this last artist, and their half-length portraits occupied places of honour on either side of the high chimney-piece, which was an elaborate structure in white and coloured marble, with the armorial bearings of the Chumleighs carved in high relief on the central panel.
Beside the fireplace sat a faded, little woman, who rose with a languid air when her husband presented the stranger, and sank almost to the carpet in a kind of swooning curtsy.
"Indeed, sir, it is a privilege to see any one at Chumleigh who has seen the town within twelve months," she said to Herrick, in acknowledgment of her husband's half-apologetic introduction of the stranger. "We live here in the wilds, and our most intellectual company are huntsmen and feeders. There is scarcely an hour of the day when I am free from the intrusion of a great hulking fellow redolent of kennel or stable."
"My dear, I must see my servants, and unless you and I are to live in separate houses I know not how you are to escape an occasional whiff of the stable," grumbled Sir John.
"O, I must forgive you your servants," replied his wife, "since your friends are but a shade better—men who have but two subjects of discourse: the last horse they have bought, or the last run in which they were thrown out, or in which they were first at the death. They seem almost as proud of one circumstance as of the other. But pray, sir," turning to Herrick, and exposing a scornful and somewhat scraggy shoulder to her husband, "tell me the last news in town. Is Lady Mary Hervey as great a toast as ever? I for my part never thought her a beauty, though she has some good points. And is her husband still a valetudinarian?"
"Yes, madam, Lord Hervey is always complaining, but as he contrives to perform all his Court duties, which are onerous, I take it he is more robust than the world thinks him, or than he thinks himself."
"And Mrs. Howard? Has she finished her new house at Twit'nam?"
"Marble Hill? Yes, madam, 'tis just finished, and is the prettiest thing for its size I ever saw."
"And is she still the first favourite with his Majesty?"
"That, madam, she has never been, and never will be. The Queen is the reigning sultana at Kensington and at Richmond, whatever illicit loves may beguile his Majesty's sojourn at Hanover, where one would think his heart was fixed, so eager is he ever to get there."
"Indeed, sir! Then it is Vashti and not Esther who reigns. I am glad of that, for the sake of honour and honesty. Why does not the King send Mrs. Howard about her business?"
"O madam, such an idea is furthest from his thoughts. He must have somewhere to spend his evenings. The Queen is his mentor, his chief counsellor, and he knows it, though he affects to think otherwise: he must have an amiable stupid woman to talk to by way of relaxation. No one could endure the perpetual company of the goddess Minerva. Be assured, madam, Venus was as empty-headed as she was pretty, and that's why she had so many adorers."
"You give a very bad notion of your own sex, sir," retorted the lady, busying herself with the tea-tray, which had been brought in during the discussion. "But as for beauty, I never thought Mrs. Howard could claim dominion upon that account. She has fine hair and a good complexion; but how many a milkmaid can boast as much!"
"Doubtless, madam; and a milkmaid would be just as pleasing to King George, if she were a little deaf and very complacent."
"For shame, sir! Let us talk no more of this odious subject. Pray enlighten me about the theatres. Is Drury Lane or Lincoln's Inn most fashionable? I have not seen a play for a century. Sir John has always an excuse for not taking me to London."
"The best in the world, my love, an empty purse," answered the Baronet cheerily.
"No wonder your purse is empty when you squander hundreds upon your kennels," complained the lady, who was fond of airing her grievances before a third person.
"Squander, my lady? squander, did you say? To maintain a pack of foxhounds is to perform a public duty; it is to be the chief benefactor of one's neighbourhood. When I can no longer pay for my kennels and support my church may I lie in my grave under the shadow of the tower, where the music of my hounds can no longer gladden my ear. No, madam, the maintenance of an historic pack is no selfish extravagance. It is the highest form of philanthropy. It gives sport to the wealthy and employment to the poor; it affords pleasure to gentle and simple, old and young. If you could sit a horse, Maria, you would not talk such foolish cant as to call my kennel an extravagance."
This question of horsemanship was always a sore point with Lady Chumleigh, and no less savage beast than a husband would have been brutal enough to touch upon it.
"Had I health and strength for such rough work as hunting, I make no doubt I could ride as well as my neighbours," replied the lady, with a semi-hysterical sniffling sound which alarmed her spouse, as it was often the forerunner of shrill screams, and shriller laughter, tapping of red-heeled shoes on the carpet, cutting of laces, burning of feathers, and spilling of essences, with all the troublesome rites of the Goddess Hysteria.
"And so indeed you could, my dearest love," he cried, eager to avert the storm; "you have the neatest figure for the saddle on this side Winchester, and would be the prettiest little hussy in the hunting-field if you had but the courage to ride my bay Kitty, than which no sheep was ever tamer."
"It is not courage I want, Sir John, but stamina," murmured the dame, appeased and smiling.
"I hope you like this bohea, Mr. Durnford," she said blandly; "it is the same as the Duchess drinks at Canons."
Herrick declared it was the best tea he had tasted for an age. Sir John informed his wife that the stranger would sup with them, and stay the night; and then the two gentlemen went back to the library, where Mr. Chumleigh's letter was produced from an iron box containing family documents.
Herrick read it slowly and meditatively, trying to get the most he could out of a very brief statement.
"Montpellier, October 20, 1706.
"My dear Sir John,—As you may happen to hear of my marriage, and perhaps from those who may not be friendly to me, I think it my duty to furnish you with some particulars of that event which so nearly concerns the happiness and honour of two people, my wife and myself.
"Imprimis, you will be told perhaps that I stole my wife from a convent. Well, so I did, but she was under no vow, had taken no veil: was only a young lady placed there by her guardian as pupil and boarder; and from what I know I believe she might have been left to languish there in a dismal confinement within the four high walls of an ancient Italian garden, if love and I had not rescued her. It is needless to make a long story of how we met by chance in the convent chapel, and afterwards by contrivance, and how we soon discovered that Providence had designed us each for the other. I never had a dishonourable feeling in regard to my charmer, and my crime in carrying her off from that sanctimonious prison-house was no more than if I had run away with a young lady from a fashionable seminary at Bath or Tunbridge. She brought me no fortune, and may never bring me a shilling, though I have reason to believe her father is inordinately rich. You will think it strange when I tell you that his daughter does not even know his name, and has no recollection of his person, or having ever seen him since her infancy. The only person connected with her who ever visited the convent was a steward, who came twice a year to pay her pension, and who always brought her valuable presents. I can but think that my dearest girl must have been the offspring of an illicit love, and that her parent must be one of that race of travelling Englishmen who affect the Continent most because of its wider scope for dissolute habits.
"She was treated with much respect and consideration by the nuns, but they never told her anything about her own history. To her natural questions on this subject she received one unalterable reply: 'You will know all in good time.'
"That time, by my act, may never come; for my wife knows not how or where to address her mysterious parent. It may be that I have cut her off from the inheritance of a splendid fortune, and that thought gives me some uneasiness, as I see her smiling upon me while I write these lines in our humble lodging. But we are both so happy that I can scarce doubt we have done wisely in obeying the sweet impulsion that united our lives, as I have an honest intention of working hard to win independence, and trust the day may come when we shall afford to scorn the wealth of a profligate who was ashamed to acknowledge his lovely and innocent child.
"I hope, sir, when I go to London with my wife next summer, with the intention of entering my name at the Temple, you will honour us both with your countenance, and that in the mean time you will be assured I have done nothing to forfeit your goodwill as the head of our family.—I have the honour to remain, my dear sir, your very affectionate and dutiful servant,
"Philip Chumleigh."
This was all, and gave but little precise information.
"You have no other letters of your kinsman's bearing upon his marriage, sir?" inquired Herrick.
"None."
"And did he tell you nothing more when he called upon you afterwards with his child?"
"Nothing. To tell you the truth, sir," said the Baronet, who, warmed by a second bottle, now glowed with a generous candour, "I was in a mighty ill mood for receiving an out-at-elbows relation upon the particular afternoon this gentleman came here; for I had just brought home the finest hunter in my stud dead lame from a stumble into a blind ditch. I could have turned upon my own mother, sir; and then comes this third cousin of mine with a puling brat, and tells me he has not a penny in the world, and asks me to give him hospitality till his fortunes mend—whereas there was no more hope of his fortunes mending than of my poor Brown Bess getting a new leg—and I daresay I may have answered him somewhat uncivilly; and so we parted, as I told you, in a rage. But I am sorry for it, now you tell me he died of hunger. 'Tis hard for a gentleman to sink so low."
"Will you allow me to take a copy of that letter, Sir John?"
"A dozen, sir, if you please. There are pens on that standish, and paper somewhere on the table. I'll go and smoke my pipe in the saddle-room while you act scribe, and I daresay when you've finished it will be supper-time, and we shall both be in appetite for a chine and a venison pasty. We keep country hours."
Mr. Durnford went back to London and worked hard in the senate and in his study, eschewing all those scenes of pleasure and dissipation which had once been his natural atmosphere. Lord Lavendale remonstrated with him for having turned hermit and forsaken his friend.
"Thou wert once as my twin brother, Herrick," he said, "but thou art now as some over-wise cousin, too sober and industrious to be on good terms with folly."
"I am in love, Jack, and I have a serious purpose in this life which gives strength to resolution and sweetens labour."
"Joseph Addison himself, the Christian philosopher, never pronounced sounder wisdom."
"Alas, Lavendale, I wish with all my heart you could find one to love whose mereeidolonshould be strong enough to guard and guide you."
"To keep my feet from Chocolate Houses and my tongue from libertine discourse, eh, Herrick? Nay, old friend, there is no such woman. The one I love is of the world, worldly. Were she free to wed me, I would do all that man dare do to win her: but she is not free, and I can but amuse myself in the paths of foolishness."
"You are ruining your health, wasting your fortune, and I doubt if even at this cost you have bought happiness."
"No, Herrick, it is not to be bought so cheap. 'Tis a thing I have never known since my first youth, when I began to find out the inside of the apples of Sodom. Dust and ashes, friend: life is all dust and ashes, when once the curiosity of youth is satisfied and the novelty of sinful pleasures is worn off, if you call it sinful to drink and play deep, and to love the company of handsome unscrupulous women, which I do not."
"If your mother were living, Jack, she whom you loved so well, whose memory I have heard you say is more sacred to you than anything else on the earth, would you have lived the life you are leading now?"
"It would have vexed that pure and gentle spirit, Herrick, to see me as I am. Well, perhaps for her sake—yes, I have often told myself I should have been a better man had she lived—perhaps for her sake I might have forsworn sack and lived cleanly. But she is gone—she is at rest, where my follies cannot touch her."
"How do you know that? Have you not spoken to me of the influence of the dead upon the living? Do you not think that in the after life there may be consciousness of the sins and sorrows of those that the dead have loved better than they ever loved themselves? Do you think the chain of love is so weak that death snaps it?"
"The after life! Ah, Herrick, that is the question in which we are all at fault. It is uncertainty about that after life which damns us here. Better to fear hell than to be without hope beyond the grave. I swear, Herrick, I should be ever so much happier if I believed in the devil."
"And in God."
"That needs not saying. We all want to believe in a God, but we shirk the notion of a devil. Now I would accept Satan in all his integrity could I but believe in the rest of the spiritual world, angels and archangels, and all the hierarchy of heaven. If I could think that my mother's spirit hovered near me, could be vexed by my follies or moved by my penitence, that sweet spiritual influence would guard me from evil far better than any sublunary love. If I could believe, Herrick—but it is that damnableifwhich wrecks us."
"Do you not think, Jack, that it would pay a man to be a good Christian on speculation?"
"You mean that the satisfaction of living a decent life, the consciousness of moral rectitude, and the better conduct of his affairs, would recompense him for the pains of self-denial, and that he would have the chance of future reward—say as one to ninety-nine—by way of bonus."
"Ah, Jack, you are incorrigible. Bolingbroke and his disciple Voltaire have corrupted you."
"No, Herrick, I am no idle echo of other men's doubts. I hear his lordship and the Frenchman bandy the ball of infidelity, scoff at all creeds and all believers, quote Collins and Woolston, discredit Abraham, and make light of Moses; prove the absurdity of all miracles, the fatuity of all Christians. But it was in the depths of my own heart, in the silence of my own chamber, that doubt first entered: and, like the devil that came to Dr. Faustus in Marlowe's play, once having entered, the intruder was not to be banished. That heaven which you Christians talk of with such easy assurance, looking forward to your residence there as placidly as a wealthy cit looks forward to a mansion at Clapham or a cottage at Islington—that golden Jerusalem—is for me girt with a wall of brass that shuts out hope and belief."
"Your mind will change some day, Jack."
"ThenI shall begin to believe in miracles."
This was but one of the many conversations which the friends had held upon the same subject. Let their lives or their creeds differ never so much, they were always staunch and loyal to each other. Whatever new hopes might gladden Herrick's pathway, the companion of his wild youth must be ever to him as a dearly loved brother.
At Whitsuntide the House was up, and Herrick was his own master for a week. He was to spend part of the time at Lavendale Manor, but not all his holiday. He had other business for some portion of the week, and that business took him to Tunbridge Wells.
He had read in one of the fashionable journals, theFlying Post, that Lady Tredgold and her daughters were staying at the Wells; and he happened to have just at this time a desire to renew his acquaintance with her ladyship, albeit she had done her very best to snub him.
"Perhaps, now I am member for Bossiney, and supposed to stand well with Sir Robert, she may be more civil," he said to himself.
He was not mistaken in his conjecture. He met the lady and her daughters promenading the Pantiles next day, and was received with cordiality. His fame had reached the Bath, where he had been talked of as one of the rising young men of the day. Walpole's favour, his own success in the House, had been alike exaggerated by the many-tongued goddess, and Lady Tredgold, who last winter had esteemed him an insufficient match for her wealthy niece, was, in this merry month of May, inclined to look upon him as a tolerable suitor for her dowerless elder daughter, whose charms had been on the wane for the last three years, and whom the Bath and the Wells had alike rejected from the list of toasts and belles.
Mrs. Amelia herself was disposed to smile upon any gentleman of moderate abilities and good appearance, and she shone radiantly upon Herrick, who was something more than good-looking, for he had that indefinable air of superior intellect which comes of a thoughtful life, and which is always interesting to women. Mrs. Amelia piqued herself upon being intellectually superior to the common herd, and welcomed a congenial spirit. And then Herrick came fresh from the town, and was well up in all those fashionable scandals and tittle-tattlings which are agreeable even to women of mind.
Mr. Durnford and the ladies paraded side by side for three or four turns—nodded and smirked at their acquaintance, as who should say, "Here is as finished a beau as you will find in all Tunbridge just dropped into our net; would you not like to know who he is?"
Lady Tredgold was monstrously civil, and invited the new arrival to tea. Herrick knew this would mean an evening at quadrille, but he had a few guineas in his purse and was not afraid of the encounter. He was willing to lose his money to her ladyship as the easiest way of putting her in a good temper. So he went straight from the Pantiles to her ladyship's lodgings, which were small and even shabby, which disadvantages Lady Tredgold deprecated with her easiest air.
"We were glad to get a shelter for our poor heads," she exclaimed; "the place is so crowded for the holidays, and the fine spring weather has brought all the world to the Wells. The lodging-house people charge exorbitantly for their hovels, and I assure you we pay a fortune for these wretched holes of ours, in which I am positively ashamed to receive you, my dear Mr. Durnford. However, I am told that in King Charles's time people of quality were content to pig in movable cabins that were wheeled about the common at the pleasure of their owners; so I suppose we should be prodigiously pleased with a parlour that is at least wind and weather proof."
The tea-table was served with a certain air of elegance, as Lady Tredgold had brought some of the family plate from Bath, together with a set of Nankin cups and saucers. Durnford sipped the delicately-flavoured pekoe and gossiped with the three ladies, while the sun sank in a bed of crimson glory behind the hillocky common, and the blackbirds and thrushes sang their evening hymns in the thickets and copses that skirted the little town.
"Have you seen my cousin Irene lately, Mr. Durnford?" asked Sophia suddenly.
She was nearer thirty than she cared to be, but still ranked as the young hoyden sister, and was distinguished for making silly speeches.
"I think, Mrs. Sophia, you must know that I am forbidden to approach that young lady," answered Herrick, while the mother frowned upon her younger hope.
"Indeed, but I didn't know, so I didn't. And why ain't you let see my cousin?" asked the innocent girl.
"Because I was once so bold as to aspire to her hand. I waited upon the Squire as one gentleman should upon another, and put my suit in the plainest way, but I was rejected with contumely. Yet in point of family the Durnfords may fairly rank with the Bosworths, and it is but sordid lucre which makes the barrier between us."
"My dear sir, that sordid lucre is the most insurmountable barrier that can divide hearts nowadays," exclaimed her ladyship, with an air of good-natured candour. "Look at my two girls. They have had their admirers, I can assure you, and among the prettiest fellows in town. They have been sighed for, and almost died for, by gentlemen whose admiration was an honour. But then came family considerations; fathers intervened; and when it was found out that my poor chicks would have but two thousand pound apiece out of his lordship's estate, and would have to wait for even that pittance till his lordship's death, their lovers were forbidden to carry the business any further, and fond and faithful hearts were parted."
The two young ladies sighed and shook their heads plaintively, as if each had her history.
"If you are wise you will give up all thought of Irene," continued Lady Tredgold. "My brother-in-law worships money and rank. He will either marry his daughter to a peer or a millionaire. I know that he has set his heart upon founding a great family. I fancy he would like best to get some poor sprig of nobility like your friend Lavendale, who would assume his wife's name—call himself Lavendale-Bosworth, or Lavendale and Bosworth, by letters patent, or sink the old name altogether, and become plain Lord Bosworth."
"My friend will sell neither himself nor his name, madam," answered Durnford. "I know that he had a profound admiration for your niece's beauty and sweet simplicity of mind and manners."
"Simplicity! Yes, she is simple enough, to be sure!" ejaculated Amelia.
"But I have reason to know that his heart was too deeply involved in a former attachment—"
"My good sir, we all know that," exclaimed her ladyship impatiently. "We know it as well as that my royal mistress, dear stupid old Anne, is dead and buried. Lord Lavendale's passion for Lady Judith Topsparkle has been town talk for the last four years: and since last winter's masquerades and assemblies there have been as many bets among the wits and beaux as to whether she will or will not run away with him as ever there are upon the result of a race. But pray what has that to do with the question? If he is a sensible young man, he will mend his morals and his fortune at the same time by marrying my niece. Providence must mean their estates to be one, and they would be the handsomest couple in London."
"I have so much respect for Mrs. Bosworth as to believe she would die rather than give her hand where she could not give her heart," said Durnford.
"O, these girls all talk of dying, they all protest and whimper and pout," said Lady Tredgold. "But they have to obey their fathers in the end, and then somehow it falls out that they are monstrously fond of their husbands, and you will see a couple who have been brought together by harsh fathers and the tyranny of circumstance transformed after marriage into such doating lovers as to sicken the town by their endearments and silly praises of each other. No girl should ever be allowed to have her own way in the disposal of herself or her fortune."
"You talk, madam, like Lady Capulet."
"If I do, it is unawares, sir, for I have not the honour of that lady's acquaintance. Will you do me the favour to ring for candles, Mr. Durnford? My people neglect us in these strange quarters. Perhaps you would be agreeable to join us in a hand at quadrille, if you have nothing better to do with the next hour."
Herrick protested that there could not be any better employment for his evening. Her ladyship's people consisted of a man and a maid. The candles were brought by the man, who put out the cards and set the table with the air of performing a nightly duty; and the ladies and their beau sat down to that favourite and scientific game which preceded "whisk" in fashion and popularity.
"I am told the old Duchess of Marlborough prefers roly-poly to quadrille or ombre," said Herrick, as the cards were being dealt.
"O, there is a vein of vulgarity in that old woman which shows itself in everything she does," replied Lady Tredgold scornfully. "I detest the virago."
"And yet there is an element of greatness in her character," said Herrick. "Great talents, great beauty, great fortune, have all been hers: and she has been conspicuous in an age of lax morality as a woman of spotless virtue."
"O sir, it is an ill thing perhaps for any woman to say in the presence of unmarried daughters, but I own I agree with Joseph Addison that a woman has no right to practise every other vice on the ground that she possesses one virtue, even though that virtue of chastity is, I grant you, the chief merit in woman."
"I am with you there, madam, and agree that even sad Lucretia's modesty would scarce justify a woman in shrewing her husband, maligning her innocent granddaughter, and quarrelling with every member of her family: and yet I own to some touch of half-reluctant admiration for the mighty Sarah. Mr. Cibber told me once how it was his task to attend upon her at a supper in Nottingham Castle, about the time of King James's flight from this kingdom, and that her beauty appeared to him as an emanation of Divinity, rather than a mere earthly loveliness. And then she is such a magnificent virago. The woman who had the spunk to cut off her splendid tresses, the chief glory of her womanhood, and fling them across her husband's path in a freak of temper—"