CHAPTER IV
“Who will dareTo pluck thee from me? And of thine own will,Full well I feel that thou wouldst not leave me.”
“Who will dareTo pluck thee from me? And of thine own will,Full well I feel that thou wouldst not leave me.”
“Who will dareTo pluck thee from me? And of thine own will,Full well I feel that thou wouldst not leave me.”
“Who will dare
To pluck thee from me? And of thine own will,
Full well I feel that thou wouldst not leave me.”
The sunshine of a summer morning, streaming in through mullioned windows that looked due south, raised Juanita’s spirits, and dispersed her fears. It was impossible to feel depressed under such a sky. She had been wakeful for a considerable part of the night, brooding upon that ghostly footstep which had sent such a sudden chill to her warm young heart, but that broad clear light of morning brought common sense.
“I dare say it was only some lovesick housemaid, roaming about after all the others had gone to bed, in order to have a quiet think about her sweetheart, and what he said to her last Sunday as they went home from church. I know howIused to walk about with no company but my thoughts of you, Godfrey, and how sweet it used to be to go over all your dearest words—over and over again,—and no doubt the heart of a housemaid is worked by just the same machinery that sets mine going—and her thoughts would follow the same track.”
“That is what we are taught to believe, dearest, in this enlightened age.”
“Why should it be a ghost?” pursued Juanita, leaning back in her bamboo chair, and lazily enjoying the summer morning, somewhat languid after a sleepless night.
They were breakfasting at the western end of the terrace, with an awning over their heads, and a couple of footmen travelling to and from the house in attendance upon them, and keeping respectfully out of earshot between whiles. The table was heaped with roses, and the waxen chalices of a great magnolia on the lower level showed above the marble balustrade, and shed an almost overpowering perfume on the warm air.
“Why should a ghost come now?” she asked, harping upon her morbid fancies. “There has never been a hint of a ghost in all the years that father and mother have lived here. Why should one come now, unless——”
“Unless what, love?”
“Unless one of the Strangways died last night—at the very moment when we heard the footfall—died in some distant land, perhaps, and with his last dying thought revisited the place of his birth. One has heard of such things.”
“One has heard of a great many strange things. The human imagination is very inventive.”
“Ah, you are a sceptic, I know. I don’t think I actually believe in ghosts—but I am afraid of being forced to believe in them. Oh, Godfrey, if it were meant for a warning,” she cried, with sudden terror in the large dark eyes.
“What kind of warning?”
“A presage of misfortune—sickness—death. I have read so many stories of such warnings.”
“My dearest love, you have read too much rubbish in that line. Your mind is full of morbid fancies. If the morning were not too warm, I should say put on your habit and let us go for a long ride. I am afraid this sauntering life of ours is too depressing for you.”
“Depressing—to be with you all day! Oh, Godfrey,youmust be tired ofmeif you can suggest such a thing.”
“But, my Nita, when I see you giving yourself up to gloomy speculations about ghosts and omens.”
“Oh, that means nothing. When one has a very precious treasure one must needs be full of fears. Look at misers; how nervous they are about their hidden gold. And my treasure is more to me than all the gold of Ophir—infinitely precious.”
She sprang up from her low chair, and leaned over the back of his to kiss the broad brow which was lifted up to meet those clinging lips.
“Oh, my love, my love, I never knew what fear meant till I knew the fear of parting from you,” she murmured.
“Put on your habit, Nita. We will go for a ride in spite of the sun. Or what do you say to driving to Dorchester, and storming your cousins for a lunch? I want to talk to Mr. Dalbrook about Skinner’s bill of dilapidations.”
Her mood changed in an instant.
“That would be capital fun,” she cried. “I wonder if it is a breach of etiquette to lunch with one’s cousins during one’s honeymoon?”
“A fig for etiquette. Thomas,” to an approaching footman, “order the phaeton for half-past eleven.”
“What a happy idea,” said Juanita, “a long, long drive with you, and then the fun of seeing how you get on with my strong-minded cousins. They pretend to despise everything that other girls care for, don’t you know; and go in for literature, science, politics, every thing intellectual, in short; and I have seen them sit and nurse Darwin or Buckle for a whole evening, while they have talked of gowns and bonnets and other girls’ flirtations.”
“Then they are not such Roman maidens as they affect to be.”
“Far from it. They will take the pattern of my frock with their eyes before I have been in the room ten minutes. Just watch them.”
“I will; if I can take my eyes off you.”
Juanita ran away to change her white peignoir for a walking-dress,and reappeared in half an hour radiant and ready for the drive.
“How do you like my frock?” she asked, posing herself in front of her husband, and challenging admiration.
The frock was old gold Indian silk, soft and dull, made with an exquisite simplicity of long flowing draperies, over a kilted petticoat which just showed the neat little tan shoes, and a glimpse of tan silk stocking. The bodice fitted the tall supple figure like a glove; the sleeves were loose and short, tied carelessly at the elbow with a broad satin ribbon, and the long suéde gloves matched the gown to the nicest shade. Her hat was leghorn, broad enough to shade her eyes from the sun, high enough to add to her importance, and caught up on one side with a bunch of dull yellow barley and a few cornflowers, whose vivid hue was repeated in a cluster of the same flowers embroidered on one side of the bodice. Her large sunshade was of the same silk as her gown, and that was also embroidered with cornflowers, a stray blossom flung here and there with an accidental air.
“My love, you look as if you had stepped out of a fashion book.”
“I suppose I am too smart,” said Juanita with an impatient sigh; “and yet my colouring is very subdued. There is only that touch of blue in the cornflowers—just the one high light in the picture. That is the only drawback to country life. Everything really pretty seems too smart for dusty roads and green lanes. One must be content to grope one’s obscure way in a tailor gown or a cotton frock all the year round. Now this would be perfection for a Wednesday in Hyde Park, wouldn’t it?”
“My darling, it is charming. Why should you not be prettily dressed under this blue summer sky? You can sport your tailor gowns in winter. You are not too smart for me, Nita. You are only too lovely. Bring your dust cloak, and you may defy the perils of the road.”
Celestine, Lady Carmichael’s French-Swiss maid, was in attendance with the dust cloak, an ample wrap of creamy silk and lace, cloudlike, indescribable. This muffled the pretty gown from top to toe, and Nita took her seat in the phaeton, and prepared for a longer drive and a longer talk than they had had yesterday.
She was pleased at the idea of showing off her handsome young husband and her new frock to those advanced young ladies, who had affected a kind of superiority on the ground of what she called “heavy reading,” and what they called advanced views. Janet and Sophia had accepted Lady Cheriton’s invitations with inward protest, and in their apprehension of being patronized had been somewhat inclined to give themselves airs, taking pains to impress upon their cousin that she was as empty-headed as she was beautiful, and that they stood upon an intellectual plane for which she had no scaling ladder. She had put up with such small snubbings in thesweetest way, knowing all the time that as the Honourable Juanita Dalbrook, of Cheriton Chase, and one of the débutantes whose praises had been sung in all the society papers, she inhabited a social plane as far beyond their reach as their intellectual plane might be above hers.
“I don’t suppose we shall see Theodore,” said Juanita, as the bays bowled merrily along the level road.
The greys were getting a rest after yesterday’s work, and these were Lady Cheriton’s famous barouche horses, to whom the phaeton seemed a toy.
“He must have gone to Heidelberg before now,” added Juanita.
“He must be fond of Heidelberg to be running off there when it is so jolly at home.”
“He was there for a year, you know, before he went to Cambridge, and he is always going back there or to the Hartz for his holidays. I sometimes tell him he is half a German.”
She rather hoped that Theodore was in Germany by this time; and yet she had assured herself in her own mind that there could be no pain to him in their meeting. She knew that he had loved her—that in one rash hour, after a year’s absence in America, when he had not known, or had chosen to forget, the state of affairs between her and Godfrey, he had told her of his love, and had asked her to give him hope. It was before her engagement; but she was not the less frank in confessing her attachment to Godfrey. “I can never care for any one else,” she said; “I have loved him all my life.”
All her life! Yes, that was Theodore’s irreparable loss. While he, the working man, had been grinding out his days in the treadmill round of a country solicitor’s office, the young patrician had been as free as the butterflies in Juanita’s rose garden; free to woo her all day long, free to share her most trifling pleasures and sympathize with her lightest pains. What chance had the junior partner in Dalbrook & Son against Sir Godfrey Carmichael of Milbrook Priory?
Theodore had managed his life so well after that one bitter rebuff that Juanita had a right to suppose that his wound had healed, and that the pain of that hour had been forgotten. She was sincerely attached to him, as a kinsman, and respected him more than any other young man of her acquaintance. Had not Lord Cheriton, that admirable judge of character, declared that Theodore was one of the cleverest men he knew, and regretted that he had not attached himself to the higher branch of the law, as the more likely in his case to result in wealth and fame?
The phaeton drove up to the old Hanoverian doorway as St. Peter’s clock chimed the quarter after one. The old man-servant looked surprised at this brilliant vision of a beautiful girl, a fine pair of horses, a smart groom, and Sir Godfrey Carmichael. Thetout-ensemblewas almost bewildering even to a man accustomed to seethe various conveyances of neighbouring landowners at his master’s door.
“Yes, my lady, both the young ladies are at home,” said Brown, and led the way upstairs with unshaken dignity.
He had lived in that house five-and-thirty years, beginning as shoe-black and errand boy, and he was proud to hear his master tell his friends how he had risen from the ranks. He had indulged in some mild philanderings with pretty parlour-maids in the days of his youth, but had never seriously entangled himself, and was a confirmed bachelor, and something of a misogynist. He was a pattern of honesty and conscientiousness, having no wife and family to be maintained upon broken victuals and illuminated with filched candle-ends or stolen oil. He had not a single interest outside his master’s house, hardly so much as a thought; and the glory and honour of “family” were his honour and glory. So, as he ushered Lady Carmichael and her husband to the drawing-room, he was meditating upon what additions to the luncheon he could suggest to cook which might render that meal worthy of such distinguished guests.
Sophia was seated by one of the windows, painting an orchid in a tall Venetian vase. It was a weakness with these clever girls to think they could do everything. They were not content with Darwin and the new learning, but they painted indifferently in oils and in water colours, played on various instruments, sang in three languages, and fancied themselves invincible at lawn tennis.
The orchid was top-heavy, and had been tumbling out of the vase every five minutes in a manner that had been very trying to the artist’s temper, and irritating to Janet, who was grappling with a volume of Johann Müller, in the original, and losing herself in a labyrinth of words beginning withverand ending withheit.
They both started up from occupations of which both were tired, and welcomed their visitors with a show of genuine pleasure; for although they had been very determined in their resistance to anything like patronage on Juanita’s part when she was Miss Dalbrook, they were glad that she should be prompt to recognize the claims of kindred now that she was Lady Carmichael.
“How good of you to come!” exclaimed Janet. “I didn’t think you would remember us, at such a time.”
“Did you think I must forget old friends because I am happy?” said Juanita. “But I mustn’t take credit for other people’s virtues. It was Godfrey who proposed driving over to see you.”
“I wanted to show you what a nice couple we make,” said Sir Godfrey, gaily, drawing his bride closer to him, as they stood side by side, tall and straight, and glowing with youth and gladness, in the middle of the grave old drawing-room. “You young ladies were not so cousinly as your brother Theodore.Youdidn’t drive to Cheriton to welcome us home.”
“If Theo had told us what he was going to do we should havebeen very glad to be there too,” replied Sophy, “but he rode off in the morning without saying a word to anybody.”
“He is in Germany by this time, I suppose?” said Juanita.
“He is downstairs in the office. His portmanteau has been packed for a week, I believe,” explained Janet, “but there is always some fresh business to prevent his starting. My father relies upon him more every day.”
“Dear, good Theodore, he is quite the cleverest man I know,” said Juanita, without the slightest idea of disparaging her husband, whom she considered perfection. “I think he must be very much like what my father was at his age.”
“People who are in a position to know tell us that he is exactly what hisownfather was at that age,” said Janet, resenting this attempt to trace her brother’s gifts to a more distant source. “I don’t see why one need go further. My father would not have been trusted as he has been for the last thirty years if he were a simpleton; and Galton observes——”
The door opened at this moment, and Theodore came in.
He greeted his cousin and his cousin’s husband with unaffected friendliness.
“It it against my principles to take luncheon,” he said, laughingly, as he gave Juanita his hand, “but this is a red-letter day. My father is waiting for us in the dining-room.”
They all went down stairs together, Theodore leading the way with his cousin, talking gaily as they went down the wide oak staircase, between sober panelled walls of darkest brown. The front part of the ground floor was given up to offices, and the dining-room was built out at the back, a large bright-looking room with a bay window, opening on to a square town garden, a garden of about half an acre, surrounded with high walls, above which showed the treetops in one of the leafy walks that skirt the town. It was very different to that Italian garden at Cheriton, where the peacocks strutted slowly between long rows of cypresses, where the Italian statues showed white in every angle of the dense green wall, and where the fountain rose and fell with a silvery cadence in the still summer atmosphere. Here there was only a square lawn, just big enough for a tennis court, and a broad border of hardy flowers, with one especial portion at the end of the garden, where Sophia experimented in cross fertilization after the manner of Darwin, seeming for ever upon the threshold of valuable discoveries.
Mr. Dalbrook was a fine-looking man of some unascertained age between fifty and sixty. He boasted that he was Lord Cheriton’s junior by a year or two, although they had both come to a time of life when a year or two more or less could matter very little.
He was very fond of Juanita, and he welcomed her with especial tenderness in her new character as a bride. He kissed her, and then held her away from him for a minute, with a kindly scrutiny.
“Lady Godfrey surpasses Miss Dalbrook,” he said, smiling at the girl’s radiant face. “I suppose now you are going to be the leading personage in our part of the county. We quiet townspeople will be continually hearing of you, and there will not be a local paper without a notice of your doings. Anyhow, I am glad you don’t forget old friends.”
He placed her beside him at the large oval table, on which the handsomest plate and the eldest china had been set forth with a celerity which testified to Brown’s devotion. Mr. Dalbrook was one of those sensible people who never waste keep or wages upon a bad horse or a bad servant, whereby his cook was one of the best in Dorchester; so the luncheon, albeit plain and unpretentious, was a meal of which no man need feel ashamed.
Juanita was fond of her uncle, as she called this distant cousin of hers, to distinguish him from the younger generation, and she was pleased to be sitting by him, and hearing all the news of the county town and the county people who were his clients, and in many cases his friends. It may be that his cousinship with Lord Cheriton had gone as far as his professional acumen to elevate him in the esteem of town and county, and that some people who would hardly have invited the provincial solicitor for own sake, sent their cards as a matter of course to the law lord’s cousin. But there were others who esteemed Matthew Dalbrook for his own sterling qualities, and who even liked him better than the somewhat severe and self-assertive Lord Cheriton.
While Juanita talked confidentially to her kinsman, and while Sir Godfrey discussed the latest theory about the sun, and the probable endurance of our own little planet, with Janet and Sophia, Theodore sat at the bottom of the table, silent and thoughtful, watching the lovely animated face with its look of radiant happiness, and telling himself that the woman he loved was as far away from him sitting there, within reach of his touch, within the sound of his lowest whisper, as if she had been in another world. He had borne himself bravely on her wedding-day, and smiled back her happy smile, and clasped her hand with a steady grin of friendship; but after that ordeal there had been a sad relapse in his fortitude, and he had thought of her ever since as a man thinks of that supreme possession without which life is worthless—as the miser thinks of his stolen gold—or the ambitious man of his blighted name.
Yes, he had loved her with all the strength of his heart and mind, and he knew that he could never again love with the same full measure. He was too wise a man, and too experienced in life, to tell himself that for him time could have no healing power—that no other woman could ever be dear to him; but he told himself that another love like unto this was impossible, and that all the future could bring him would be some pale faint copy of this radiant picture.
“I suppose it’s only one man in fifty who marries his first love,” he thought; and then he looked at Godfrey Carmichael and thought that to him overmuch had been given. He was a fine young fellow, clever, unassuming, with a frank good face; a man who was liked by men as well as by women; but what had he done to be worthy of such a wife as Juanita? Theodore could only answer the question in the words of Figaro, “He had taken the trouble to be born.”
That one thoughtful guest made no difference in the gaiety of the luncheon table. Matthew Dalbrook had plenty to say to his beautiful cousin, and Juanita had all the experiences of the last season to talk about, while once having started upon Sir William Thomson and the ultimate exhaustion of the sun’s heat, the sisters were not likely to stop.