- -
- 100%
- +
CHAPTER I
"A heap of dust alone remains of thee:
'Tis all thou art, and all the proud shall be!" – Pope.
In an upper chamber, through the closed blinds of which the sun is vainly striving to enter, Reginald Branscombe, fifth Earl of Sartoris, lies dead. The sheet is reverently drawn across the motionless limbs; the once restless, now quiet, face is hidden; all around is wrapt in solemn unutterable silence, – the silence that belongs to death alone!
A sense of oppressive calm is upon everything, – a feeling of loneliness, vague and shadowy. The clock has ticked its last an hour ago, and now stands useless in its place. The world without moves on unheeding; the world within knows time no more! Death reigns triumphant! Life sinks into insignificance!
Once, a little flickering golden ray, born of the hot sun outside, flashes in through some unknown chink, and casts itself gleefully upon the fair white linen of the bed. It trembles vivaciously now here, now there, in uncontrollable joyousness, as though seeking in its gayety to mock the grandeur of the King of Terrors! At least so it seems to the sole watcher in the lonely chamber, as with an impatient sigh he raises his head, and, going over to the window, draws the curtains still closer to shut out the obnoxious light; after which he comes back to where he has been standing, gazing down upon, and thinking of, the dead.
He is an old man, tall and gaunt, with kind but passionate eyes, and a mouth expressive of impatience. His hands – withered but still sinewy – are clasped behind his back; every feature in his face is full of sad and anxious thought.
What changes the passing of a few short hours have wrought – so he muses. Yesterday the man now chilled and silent for evermore was as full of animation as he – his brother – who to-day stands so sorrowfully beside his corpse. His blood had run as freely in his veins, his pulses throbbed as evenly, his very voice had been sounding strong and clear and hearty, when Death, remorseless, claimed him for his own.
Poor Reginald! Had he known of the fell disease that had nestled so long within his heart? – or had no symptoms ever shown themselves to give him kindly warning? Certainly no hint of it had ever passed his lips, even to those most near and dear to him. He had lived apparently free from care or painful forebodings of any kind, – a good and useful life too, leaving nothing for those behind (who loved him) to regret. Indeed, of late he had appeared even gayer, happier, than before; and now —
It seems such a little time ago since they both were lads together. A tiny space taken from the great eternity, when all is told. How well the living man remembers at this moment many a boyish freak and light-hearted jest, many a kindness shown and gift bestowed by the dead, that until now had wellnigh been forgotten!
He thinks of the good old college days, when they worked little, and fought hard, and trained their fresh young limbs to mighty deeds, and walked, and rode, and held their own with the best, and showed open defiance of dons and deans and proctors; he lingers, too, on the day still farther on, when Reginald, having attained to his kingdom, lavished with no meagre hand upon his more extravagant brother the money so sorely needed.
Now Reginald is gone, and he, Arthur, reigns in his stead, and – Alas! alas! poor Reggy! – Poor, dear old fellow!
He rouses himself with an effort, and, going very softly to a small door that opens from the apartment, beckons gently to somebody beyond.
An old woman, dressed in deepest mourning, and of the housekeeper type, answers his summons, her eyes red with excessive weeping.
"I am going now," Lord Sartoris whispers to her in a low tone. "I have finished everything. You will remain here until my return."
"Yes, Mr. Arthur, – yes, my Lord," she answers, nervously; and then, as she gives the old title for the first time to the man before her, she bursts out crying afresh, yet silently, in a subdued fashion, as though ashamed of her emotion.
Sartoris pats her shoulder kindly, and then with a sigh turns away, and passes from the room with bent head and hands still clasped behind him, as has become a habit with him of late years.
Down the stairs and along the hall he goes, until, reaching a door at the lower end, he pauses before it, and, opening it, enters a room, half library, half boudoir, furnished in a somewhat rococo style.
It is a room curiously built, being a complete oval, with two French windows opening to the ground, and a glass door between them – partly stained – that leads to the parterre outside. It is filled with mediæval furniture, uncompromising and as strictly uncomfortable as should be, and has its walls (above the wooden dado) covered with a high-art paper, on which impossible storks, and unearthly birds of all descriptions, are depicted as rising out of blue-green rushes.
This room is known as "my lady's chamber," – having ever been the exclusive property of the mistress of the house, until Mrs. Dorian Branscombe, in default of any other mistress, had made her own of it during her frequent visits to Hythe, and had refurnished it to suit her own tastes, which were slightly Æsthetic.
Now, she too is dead and gone, and the room, though never entirely closed or suffered to sink into disrepair, is seldom used by any of the household.
As Lord Sartoris goes in, a young man, who has been standing at one of the windows, turns and comes quickly to meet him. He is of good height, and is finely formed, with brown hair cut closely to his head, a brown moustache, and deep-blue eyes. His whole appearance is perhaps more pleasing and aristocratic than strictly handsome, his mouth being too large and his nose too pronounced for any particular style of beauty.
Yet it is his eyes – perfect as they are in shape and color – that betray the chief faults of his disposition. He is too easy-going, too thoughtless of consequences, too much given to letting things go, – without consideration or fear of what the end may bring; too full of life and spirits to-day, to dream of a sadder morrow; – so happy in the present that the future troubles him not at all.
"How ill you look!" he says, anxiously, addressing his uncle. "My dear Arthur, you have been overdoing it. You should not have remained so long in that room alone."
"Well, it is all over now," Sartoris says, wearily, sinking into a chair near him. "I was glad to finish it once for all. Those private papers he kept in his own room should be examined sooner or later; and now my task is at an end I feel more contented."
"Was there anything beyond? – "
"Very little. Just one letter sealed and directed to me. It contained a desire that poor Maud's letters should be buried with him. I found them in a drawer by themselves neatly tied with pale-blue ribbon, – her favorite color, – and with them an old likeness of her, faded almost white."
"For how long he remembered her!" says the young man, in a tone of slow astonishment.
"Too long for our present day," returns his uncle, absently. Then there is silence for a moment or two, broken only by the chatter of the birds in the sunlit garden outside. Presently Sartoris speaks again. "Where is Horace?" he asks, indifferently.
"He was here, half an hour ago, with Clarissa. She came over when she heard of – our sad news. They went out together, – to the stables, I think. Shall I find him for you?"
"No, I do not want him," says Sartoris, a little impatiently. "How strange no one told me of Clarissa's coming! And why did you not go with her to the stables, Dorian? Surely you know more about horses than he does."
About twenty years before my story opens, Dorian, fourth Lord Sartoris, died, leaving behind him three sons, – Reginald (who now, too, has passed into the land of shadows), Arthur, the present earl, and Dorian, the younger.
This Dorian alone, of all the brothers, had married. But his wife (who was notable for nothing beyond her deceitful temper and beautiful face, being as false as she was fair) having died too, in giving birth to her second child Horace, and her husband having followed her to the grave about three years later, the care of the children developed upon their uncle Reginald, who had been appointed guardian.
But Reginald – being a somewhat careless man in many respects, and little given to children – took small heed of them, and, beyond providing masters for them at first, and later on sending them to school and college, and giving them choice of professions, had left them very much to their own devices.
True, when college debts accumulated, and pressing bills from long-suffering tradespeople came pouring in, he would rouse himself sufficiently to remonstrate with them in a feeble fashion, and, having received promises of amendment from both boys, he would pay their bills, make each a handsome present (as atonement for the mild scolding), and, having thus dropped a sop to Cerberus, – or conscience, – would dismiss money matters, nephews, and all from his thoughts.
So the children grew, from youth to boyhood, from boyhood to early manhood, with no one to whom to appeal for sympathy, with no woman's voice to teach them right from wrong, – with few hardships, fewer troubles, and no affections.
Arthur Branscombe, indeed, who had come back from India six months after his father's death, and had stayed at Hythe for two interminable years (as they seemed to him), had during that time so worked himself into the heart of the eldest boy Dorian, and had so far taken him into his own in return, that long years had failed to efface the fondness of either. Indeed, now that he has returned from abroad (only, as fate has willed it, to take his brother's place), he finds the love he had grafted in the child still warm in the heart of the man.
Horace, the younger, had chosen his profession, and gone in heavily for law. But Dorian, who inherited two thousand a year from his father, and a charming residence, – situated about three miles from Hythe, and two from the pretty village of Pullingham, – had elected to try his hand at farming, and was at first honestly believed in by confiding tenants, who discussed him as a being up to his eyes in agricultural lore and literally steeped in new and improved projects for the cultivation of land.
But time undeceived these good souls. And now, though they love him better, they believe in him not at all. To adore one's horses, and to be a perfect slave to one's dogs, is one thing; to find a tender interest in the price of guano, and a growing admiration for prize pigs, is quite another. When Dorian had tried it for six months, he acknowledged, reluctantly, that to him mangels were an abomination, and over-fed cattle a wearying of the flesh!
Every now and then, indeed, he tells himself that he must "look about him," as he calls it, and, smothering a sigh, starts for a quick walk across his land, and looks at a field or two, or into the nearest paddock, and asks his steward how things are going on, and if all is as satisfactory now as in the old days when his father held the reins of government, and, having listened absently to comfortable answers and cheerful predictions for the future, strolls away again, thoroughly content, not caring to investigate matters further.
He is fond of London life, and spends a good deal of his time there; is courted and petted and made much of by enterprising dowagers with marriageable daughters, as a young man charming, well bred, altogether chic, and undoubted heir to an earldom; for of Arthur Sartoris's ever marrying, now he has so long passed the prime of life, no one ever dreams.
He knows all the best people in town, and puts in a good time when there; is a fair hand at whist, and can beat most men at billiards; will now and then put money on a favorite for the Oaks or the Grand National, but cannot be said to regard gambling as an amusement. He is extravagant in many ways, but thoroughly unselfish and kind-hearted, and generous to a fault. He is much affected by women, and adored by children, who instinctively accept him as a true friend.
Horace, both in face and in figure, is strangely like his brother, – in character very different. He is tall and well built, with eyes large, dark, and liquid, but rather too closely set to be pleasing. His mouth is firm and somewhat hard, his smile soft, but uncertain. He is always charming to women, being outwardly blind to their caprices and an admirer of their follies, and is therefore an immense favorite with a certain class of them, whose minds are subservient to their bodies. Yet to every rule there is an exception. And by women good and true, and loyal, Horace has been, and is, well beloved.
As Lord Sartoris and Dorian cross the hall, they meet Horace, and a pretty girl – tall, slender, and graceful – coming towards them. She appears sad, and slightly distressed, but scarcely unnerved: there is a suspicion of tears about her large gray eyes. Her gown, of violet velvet (for, though they are in the merry month of May, the days are still cold and fretful), sits closely to her perfect figure; a Langtry bonnet, to match her dress, covers her head and suits admirably her oval face and Grecian nose and soft peach-like complexion.
Going up, with impulsive grace, to Lord Sartoris, she lays both her ungloved hands upon his shoulders, and presses her lips with tender sympathy to his cheek.
"How sad it all is!" she says, with a little break in her voice. "How can I tell you all I feel for you? If you had only had the faintest warning! But it was all so sudden, so dreadful."
"What a kind child you are, Cissy!" says Sartoris, gently; "and to come to us so soon, that was so good of you."
"Was it?" says Clarissa, quickly. "That is what has been troubling me. We only heard the terrible news this morning, and papa said it would be intrusive to call so early; but I – I could not keep away."
"Your presence in this gloomy house is an undeniable comfort," says Sartoris, sadly. "I am glad you understood us well enough to know that. It is my greatest wish that you should regard us all with affection."
He glances from her to Dorian, as he speaks, with anxious meaning. But Dorian's gaze is fixed thoughtfully upon the stained-glass window that is flinging its crimson and purple rays upon the opposite wall, and has obviously been deaf to all that has been passing. As for Clarissa, she has turned, and is looking into Horace's dark eyes.
Sartoris, catching the glance, drops Miss Peyton's hand with a sigh. She notices the half-petulant action, and compresses her lips slightly.
"Now I have seen you, I shall feel better," she says, sweetly. "And – I think I must be going."
"Will you desert us so soon?" says Sartoris, reproachfully. "At least stay to luncheon – ." He pauses, and sighs profoundly. Just now the idea that the routine of daily life must be carried on whether our beloved lie dead upon their couches or stand living in our path, is hateful to him.
"I hardly like," says Clarissa, nervously; "I fear – "
Dorian, rousing himself from his thoughts, comes back to the present moment.
"Oh, stay, Clarissa," he says, hurriedly. "You really must, you know. You cannot imagine what a relief you are to us: you help us to bear our gloomy memories. Besides, Arthur has tasted nothing for hours, and your being here may tempt him, perhaps, to eat."
"If I can be of any use – ," says Clarissa, kindly. Whereupon Sartoris gives her his arm, and they all adjourn to the dining-room.
It is a large, old-fashioned, stately apartment, oak-panelled, with large mullioned windows, and a massive marble chimney-piece that reaches high as a man's head. A pleasant, sociable room at ordinary times, but now impregnated with the vague gloom that hangs over all the house and seeks even here to check the gaudy brightness of the sun that, rushing in, tries to illuminate it.
At the sideboard stands Simon Gale, the butler and oldest domestic of Hythe, who has lived with the dead lord as man and boy, and now regrets him with a grief more strongly resembling the sorrowing of one for a friend than for a master.
With downcast eyes and bowed head he stands, thinking sadly how much too old he is for new cares and fresh faces. Reginald had been all the world to him: the new man is as nothing. Counting friendships as of little worth unless years have gone to prove their depth and sincerity, he feels no leaning towards the present possessor, – knows him too short a time to like or dislike, to praise or blame.
Now, as his eyes wander down the long table, to where he can see the empty chair of him who rests with such unearthly tranquillity in the silent chamber above, the thought of how soon a comparative stranger will fill it causes him a bitter pang. And, as he so muses, the door opens, and they all come in, – Sartoris first, with Clarissa, pale, and quiet; the brothers – so like, yet so unlike – following.
Old Simon, rousing himself, watches with jealous eyes to see the place so long occupied by Reginald usurped by another. But he watches in vain. Sartoris, without so much as a glance in its direction, takes the chair at the lower end of the table; and the others, following his lead, seat themselves at the sides without comment of any kind; whereupon Gale draws a long breath, and vows fidelity to his new lord upon the spot.
It is a dismal meal, dull, and dispiriting. The ghastly Egyptian mummy seems present in full force, if not in the letter at least in the spirit. Sartoris, having taken a glass of sherry, trifles with the meat upon his plate, but literally eats nothing. No one appears possessed with a desire to speak, and indeed there is little to be said. When luncheon is nearly over, a small dark object, hitherto unseen, creeps out from some forgotten corner, and stretches itself forlornly; it is poor Reginald's favorite dog, that ever since his death has lain crouching out of sight, but now, driven by the pain of hunger, comes creeping forward, whining piteously.
He goes up to the accustomed chair, but, finding it for the first time empty and deaf to his complainings, turns disconsolately away, and passes from seat to seat, without accepting food at any of their hands, until he comes to Clarissa. She, stooping, raises him to her knee (her lashes wet with tears), and feeds him tenderly with the dainty scraps upon her plate.
The whole scene, though simple, is suggestive of loss and loneliness. Sartoris, leaving the table with some haste, goes to the window to hide his emotion. Dorian follows him. Whereupon Horace, rising too, crosses to where Clarissa sits, and, bending over her, says something in a low tone.
The moments fly. A clock upon the mantel-piece chimes half-past four. Some bird, in the exuberance of its mad joy, scurries wildly past the windows. Sartoris, with a sigh, turns from the light, and, seeing Miss Peyton and Horace still deep in conversation, frowns slightly.
"Horace, will you tell Durkin I want to see him at once, in the library," he says, very quietly, yet with some latent irritability.
"In one moment," replies Horace, unmoved, going back to the low-toned dialogue he has been carrying on with Clarissa.
"I am afraid I must lay myself open to the charge of rudeness," says Sartoris, still very quietly, but with a peculiar smile. "But it is important, and I must see Durkin at once. My dear Horace, oblige me in this matter."
"Shall I not see Clarissa to her carriage first?" says Horace, raising his dark eyes for one moment to his uncle's face.
"Dorian will see to that," says the old man, slowly, but so decisively that Horace, bidding the girl a silent but warm farewell, with a bad grace departs.
"How late it grows," says Miss Peyton, glancing at the clock; and, drawing from a side-pocket her own watch, she examines it attentively, as though to assure herself the huge timepiece on the mantel-shelf has not told a deliberate lie. "I must go home! Papa will wonder where I have been all this long time. Good-by, Mr. Branscombe" (she is still, naturally, forgetful of the new title). "I hope," very sweetly, "you will come to see us as soon as ever you can."
"Thank you, yes, I shall come very soon," says Sartoris; and then she bids him good-by, and Dorian follows her from the room into the great dark hall outside.
"How changed he is!" she says, turning suddenly to him, and indicating, by a little backward motion of her head towards the room she had just left, the person of whom she speaks. "How altered! – Arthur, I mean. Not now, not by this grief; it isn't that: his manner, to me especially, has been altogether different for a fortnight past. Ever since that last picnic at Anadale – you remember it – he has not been quite the same to me."
"Let me see; that, I think, was the evening you and Horace drove home alone together, with that rather uncertain brown mare, was it not?" says Dorian, with no apparent meaning in his tone. "My dear child, I dare say you are mistaken about Arthur. Your imagination is leading you astray."
"No, it is not. I am the least imaginative person alive," says Miss Peyton, with an emphatic shake of her pretty head. "I can't bear that sort of people myself; they are always seeing something that isn't there, and are generally very tiresome all around. I'm rather vexed about Arthur, do you know?"
"Don't mind him," says Branscombe, easily. "He'll come all right in time. He is a peculiar fellow in many ways, and when he sets his heart on any hobby, rides it to the death."
"Has he a hobby now?"
"Yes. He has just formed, and is now trying to work out, a gigantic scheme, and cuts up a little rough every now and then because all the world won't see it in the light that he does."
"Poor man!" says Clarissa, sympathetically, "No wonder he seems strange at times: it is so depressing to be baffled. Why don't you help him, Dorian?"
"It would take two to help him," says Mr. Branscombe, looking faintly amused.
"Could I be of any use?" – eagerly. "I would do anything I could for him."
"No, would you?" says Branscombe, his amusement growing more perceptible. "I'm sure that's very good of you. I dare say, if Arthur could hear you say that, he would go wild with joy. 'Anything' is such a comprehensive word. You're sure you won't go back of it?"
"Quite sure," – with some surprise.
"My dear Clarissa, is it possible you have not yet seen through Arthur's latest and greatest design?"
"If you intend to tell me anything, do so: beating about the bush always fatigues me to death," says Miss Peyton, in a tone of dignified rebuke. "What does Arthur want?"
"A little thing, – a mere trifle. He simply wants you to marry me."
"Really, Dorian," says Clarissa, coloring slowly, but warmly, "I think you might find some other subject to jest on."
"I never made a joke in my life; I hope I never shall," returns Branscombe, reproachfully. "What have I done, that you should accuse me of such a crime? I have only spoken the plain, unvarnished truth. To see you my wife is the dream of Arthur's life, his sole ambition. And just now, you know, you said you were quite prepared to do anything for him. You can't, with any sense of honor, back out of your given word."
"I never heard anything so absurd, so foolish, so nonsensical!" says Miss Peyton, resentfully.
"Nonsensical! My dear Clarissa! pray consider my – "
"It is more! it is right down stupid of him," says Clarissa, who plainly declines to consider any one's feelings.
"You needn't pile up my agony any higher," interposes Branscombe, meekly. "To my everlasting regret I acknowledge myself utterly unworthy of you. But why tell me so in such round terms? I assure you I feel excessively hurt and offended. Am I to understand, then, that you have refused me?"
"You shall understand something worse, if you say another word," says Clarissa, holding, up before him a little clinched hand in a would-be threatening manner. And then they both laugh in a subdued fashion; and she moves on towards the open hall-door, he following.
"Well, I forgive you," he says, as she steps into her low phaeton, and he arranges the rug carefully around her. "Though you don't deserve it. (What ridiculous little hands to guide such refractory ponies!) Sure you are quite comfortable? Well, good-by; and look here," – teasingly, – "I should think it over if I were you. You may not get so excellent a chance again; and Arthur will never forgive you."