They talked a great deal of John Marchmont. It was such a happiness to Mary to be able to talk unreservedly of her father to some one who had loved and comprehended him.
"My stepmamma was very good to poor papa, you know, Edward," she said, "and of course he was very grateful to her; but I don"t think he ever loved her quite as he loved you. You were the friend of his poverty, Edward; he never forgot that."
Once, as they strolled side by side together upon the terrace in the warm summer noontide, Mary Marchmont put her little hand through her lover"s arm, and looked up shyly in his face.
"Did papa say that, Edward?" she whispered; "did he really say that?"
"Did he really say what, darling?"
"That he left me to you as a legacy?"
"He did indeed, Polly," answered the young man. "I"ll bring you the letter to-morrow."
And the next day he showed Mary Marchmont the yellow sheet of letter-paper and the faded writing, which had once been black and wet under her dead father"s hand. Mary looked through her tears at the old familiar Oakley-street address, and the date of the very day upon which Edward Arundel had breakfasted in the shabby lodging. Yes--there were the words: "The legacy of a child"s helplessness is the only bequest I can leave to the only friend I have."
"And you shall never know what it is to be helpless while I am near you, Polly darling," the soldier said, as he refolded his dead friend"s epistle. "You may defy your enemies henceforward, Mary--if you have any enemies. O, by-the-bye, you have never heard any thing of that Paul Marchmont, I suppose?"
"Papa"s cousin--Mr Marchmont the artist?"
"Yes."
"He came to the reading of papa"s will."
"Indeed! and did you see much of him?"
"Oh, no, very little. I was ill, you know," the girl added, the tears rising to her eyes at the recollection of that bitter time,--"I was ill, and I didn"t notice any thing. I know that Mr. Marchmont talked to me a little; but I can"t remember what he said."
"And he has never been here since?"
"Never."
Edward Arundel shrugged his shoulders. This Paul Marchmont could not be such a designing villain, after all, or surely he would have tried to push his acquaintance with his rich cousin!
"I dare say John"s suspicion of him was only one of the poor fellow"s morbid fancies," he thought. "He was always full of morbid fancies."
Mrs. Marchmont"s rooms were in the western front of the house; and through her open windows she heard the fresh young voices of the lovers as they strolled up and down the terrace. The cavalry officer was content to carry a watering-pot full of water, for the refreshment of his young mistress"s geraniums in the stone vases on the bal.u.s.trade, and to do other under-gardener"s work for her pleasure. He talked to her of the Indian campaign; and she asked a hundred questions about midnight marches and solitary encampments, fainting camels, lurking tigers in the darkness of the jungle, intercepted supplies of provisions, stolen ammunition, and all the other details of the war.
Olivia arose at last, before the Swampington surgeon"s saline draughts and quinine mixtures had subdued the fiery light in her eyes, or cooled the raging fever that devoured her. She arose because she could no longer lie still in her desolation knowing that, for two hours in each long summer"s day, Edward Arundel and Mary Marchmont could be happy together in spite of her. She came down stairs, therefore, and renewed her watch--chaining her stepdaughter to her side, and interposing herself for ever between the lovers.
The widow arose from her sick-bed an altered woman, as it appeared to all who knew her. A mad excitement seemed to have taken sudden possession of her. She flung off her mourning garments, and ordered silks and laces, velvets and satins, from a London milliner; she complained of the absence of society, the monotonous dulness of her Lincolnshire life; and, to the surprise of every one, sent out cards of invitation for a ball at the Towers in honour of Edward Arundel"s return to England. She seemed to be seized with a desire to do something, she scarcely cared what, to disturb the even current of her days.
During the brief interval between Mrs. Marchmont"s leaving her room and the evening appointed for the ball, Edward Arundel found no very convenient opportunity of informing his cousin of the engagement entered into between himself and Mary. He had no wish to hurry this disclosure; for there was something in the orphan girl"s childishness and innocence that kept all definite ideas of an early marriage very far away from her lover"s mind. He wanted to go back to India, and win more laurels, to lay at the feet of the mistress of Marchmont Towers.
He wanted to make a name for himself, which should cause the world to forget that he was a younger son,--a name that the vilest tongue would never dare to blacken with the epithet of fortune-hunter.
The young man was silent therefore, waiting for a fitting opportunity in which to speak to Mary"s stepmother. Perhaps he rather dreaded the idea of discussing his attachment with Olivia; for she had looked at him with cold angry eyes, and a brow as black as thunder, upon those occasions on which she had sounded him as to his feelings for Mary.
"She wants poor Polly to marry some grandee, I dare say," he thought, "and will do all she can to oppose my suit. But her trust will cease with Mary"s majority; and I don"t want my confiding little darling to marry me until she is old enough to choose for herself, and to choose wisely. She will be one-and-twenty in three years; and what are three years? I would wait as long as Jacob for my pet, and serve my fourteen years" apprenticeship under Sir Charles Napier, and be true to her all the time."
Olivia Marchmont hated her stepdaughter. Mary was not slow to perceive the change in the widow"s manner towards her. It had always been cold, and sometimes severe; but it was now almost abhorrent. The girl shrank appalled from the sinister light in her stepmother"s gray eyes, as they followed her unceasingly, d.o.g.g.i.ng her footsteps with a hungry and evil gaze. The gentle girl wondered what she had done to offend her guardian, and then, being unable to think of any possible delinquency by which she might have incurred Mrs. Marchmont"s displeasure, was fain to attribute the change in Olivia"s manner to the irritation consequent upon her illness, and was thus more gentle and more submissive than of old; enduring cruel looks, returning no answer to bitter speeches, but striving to conciliate the supposed invalid by her sweetness and obedience.
But the girl"s amiability only irritated the despairing woman. Her jealousy fed upon every charm of the rival who had supplanted her. That fatal pa.s.sion fed upon Edward Arundel"s every look and tone, upon the quiet smile which rested on Mary"s face as the girl sat over her embroidery, in meek silence, thinking of her lover. The self-tortures which Olivia Marchmont inflicted upon herself were so horrible to bear, that she turned, with a mad desire for relief, upon those she had the power to torture. Day by day, and hour by hour, she contrived to distress the gentle girl, who had so long obeyed her, now by a word, now by a look, but always with that subtle power of aggravation which some women possess in such an eminent degree--until Mary Marchmont"s life became a burden to her, or would have so become, but for that inexpressible happiness, of which her tormentor could not deprive her,--the joy she felt in her knowledge of Edward Arundel"s love.
She was very careful to keep the secret of her stepmother"s altered manner from the young soldier. Olivia was his cousin, and he had said long ago that she was to love her. Heaven knows she had tried to do so, and had failed most miserably; but her belief in Olivia"s goodness was still unshaken. If Mrs. Marchmont was now irritable, capricious, and even cruel, there was doubtless some good reason for the alteration in her conduct; and it was Mary"s duty to be patient. The orphan girl had learned to suffer quietly when the great affliction of her father"s death had fallen upon her; and she suffered so quietly now, that even her lover failed to perceive any symptoms of her distress. How could she grieve him by telling him of her sorrows, when his very presence brought such unutterable joy to her?
So, on the morning of the ball at Marchmont Towers,--the first entertainment of the kind that had been given in that grim Lincolnshire mansion since young Arthur Marchmont"s untimely death,--Mary sat in her room, with her old friend Farmer Pollard"s daughter, who was now Mrs.
Jobson, the wife of the most prosperous carpenter in Kemberling. Hester had come up to the Towers to pay a dutiful visit to her young patroness; and upon this particular occasion Olivia had not cared to prevent Mary and her humble friend spending half an hour together. Mrs.
Marchmont roamed from room to room upon this day, with a perpetual restlessness. Edward Arundel was to dine at the Towers, and was to sleep there after the ball. He was to drive his uncle over from Swampington, as the Rector had promised to show himself for an hour or two at his daughter"s entertainment. Mary had met her stepmother several times that morning, in the corridors and on the staircase; but the widow had pa.s.sed her in silence, with a dark face, and a shivering, almost abhorrent gesture.
The bright July day dragged itself out at last, with hideous slowness for the desperate woman, who could not find peace or rest in all those splendid rooms, on all that gra.s.sy flat, dry and burning under the blazing summer sun. She had wandered out upon the waste of barren turf, with her head bared to the hot sky, and had loitered here and there by the still pools, looking gloomily at the black tideless water, and wondering what the agony of drowning was like. Not that she had any thought of killing herself. No: the idea of death was horrible to her; for after her death Edward and Mary would be happy. Could she ever find rest in the grave, knowing this? Could there be any possible extinction that would blot out her jealous fury? Surely the fire of her hate--it was no longer love, but hate, that raged in her heart--would defy annihilation, eternal by reason of its intensity. When the dinner-hour came, and Edward and his uncle arrived at the Towers, Olivia Marchmont"s pale face was lit up with eyes that flamed like fire; but she took her accustomed place very quietly, with her father opposite to her, and Mary and Edward upon either side.
"I"m sure you"re ill, Livy," the young man said; "you"re as pale as death, and your hand is dry and burning. I"m afraid you"ve not been obedient to the Swampington doctor."
Mrs. Marchmont shrugged her shoulders with a short contemptuous laugh.
"I am well enough," she said. "Who cares whether I am well or ill?"
Her father looked up at her in mute surprise. The bitterness of her tone startled and alarmed him; but Mary never lifted her eyes. It was in such a tone as this that her stepmother had spoken constantly of late.
But two or three hours afterwards, when the flats before the house were silvered by the moonlight, and the long ranges of windows glittered with the lamps within, Mrs. Marchmont emerged from her dressing-room another creature, as it seemed.
Edward and his uncle were walking up and down the great oaken banqueting-hall, which had been decorated and fitted up as a ballroom for the occasion, when Olivia crossed the wide threshold of the chamber. The young officer looked up with an involuntary expression of surprise. In all his acquaintance with his cousin, he had never seen her thus. The gloomy black-robed woman was transformed into a Semiramis. She wore a voluminous dress of a deep claret-coloured velvet, that glowed with the warm hues of rich wine in the lamplight.
Her ma.s.sive hair was coiled in a knot at the back of her head, and diamonds glittered amidst the thick bands that framed her broad white brow. Her stern cla.s.sical beauty was lit up by the unwonted splendour of her dress, and a.s.serted itself as obviously as if she had said, "Am I a woman to be despised for the love of a pale-faced child?"
Mary Marchmont came into the room a few minutes after her stepmother.
Her lover ran to welcome her, and looked fondly at her simple dress of shadowy white c.r.a.pe, and the pearl circlet that crowned her soft brown hair. The pearls she wore upon this night had been given to her by her father on her fourteenth birthday.
Olivia watched the young man as he bent over Mary Marchmont.
He wore his uniform to-night for the special gratification of his young mistress, and he was looking down with a tender smile at her childish admiration of the bullion ornaments upon his coat, and the decoration he had won in India.
The widow looked from the two lovers to an antique gla.s.s upon an ebony bureau in a niche opposite to her, which reflected her own face,--her own face, more beautiful than she had ever seen it before, with a feverish glow of vivid crimson lighting up her hollow cheeks.
"I might have been beautiful if he had loved me," she thought; and then she turned to her father, and began to talk to him of his parishioners, the old pensioners upon her bounty, whose little histories were so hatefully familiar to her. Once more she made a feeble effort to tread the old hackneyed pathway, which she had toiled upon with such weary feet; but she could not,--she could not. After a few minutes she turned abruptly from the Rector, and seated herself in a recess of the window, from which she could see Edward and Mary.
But Mrs. Marchmont"s duties as hostess soon demanded her attention. The county families began to arrive; the sound of carriage-wheels seemed perpetual upon the crisp gravel-drive before the western front; the names of half the great people in Lincolnshire were shouted by the old servants in the hall. The band in the music-gallery struck up a quadrille, and Edward Arundel led the youthful mistress of the mansion to her place in the dance.
To Olivia that long night seemed all glare and noise and confusion. She did the honours of the ballroom, she received her guests, she meted out due attention to all; for she had been accustomed from her earliest girlhood to the stereotyped round of country society. She neglected no duty; but she did all mechanically, scarcely knowing what she said or did in the feverish tumult of her soul.
Yet, amidst all the bewilderment of her senses, in all the confusion of her thoughts, two figures were always before her. Wherever Edward Arundel and Mary Marchmont went, her eyes followed them--her fevered imagination pursued them. Once, and once only, in the course of that long night she spoke to her stepdaughter.
"How often do you mean to dance with Captain Arundel, Miss Marchmont?"
she said.
But before Mary could answer, her stepmother had moved away upon the arm of a portly country squire, and the girl was left in sorrowful wonderment as to the reason of Mrs. Marchmont"s angry tone.
Edward and Mary were standing in one of the deep embayed windows of the banqueting-hall, when the dancers began to disperse, long after supper.
The girl had been very happy that evening, in spite of her stepmother"s bitter words and disdainful glances. For almost the first time in her life, the young mistress of Marchmont Towers had felt the contagious influence of other people"s happiness. The brilliantly-lighted ballroom, the fluttering dresses of the dancers, the joyous music, the low sound of suppressed laughter, the bright faces which smiled at each other upon every side, were as new as any thing in fairyland to this girl, whose narrow life had been overshadowed by the gloomy figure of her stepmother, for ever interposed between her and the outer world.
The young spirit arose and shook off its fetters, fresh and radiant as the b.u.t.terfly that escapes from its chrysalis. The new light of happiness illumined the orphan"s delicate face, until Edward Arundel began to wonder at her loveliness, as he had wondered once before that night at the fiery splendour of his cousin Olivia.