"Let it be so," said Sir Miles, briefly; and so the conversation closed.
Some weeks afterwards, Lucretia went in her uncle"s carriage, with four post-horses, with her maid and her footman,--went in the state and pomp of heiress to Laughton,--to the small lodging-house in which the kind pastor crowded his children and his young guest. She stayed there some days. She did not weep when she embraced Susan, she did not weep when she took leave of her; but she showed no want of actual kindness, though the kindness was formal and stately. On her return, Sir Miles forbore to question; but he looked as if he expected, and would willingly permit, her to speak on what might naturally be uppermost at her heart.
Lucretia, however, remained silent, till at last the baronet, colouring, as if ashamed of his curiosity, said,--
"Is your sister like your mother?"
"You forget, sir, I can have no recollection of my mother."
"Your mother had a strong family likeness to myself."
"She is not like you; they say she is like Dr. Mivers."
"Oh!" said the baronet, and he asked no more.
The sisters did not meet again; a few letters pa.s.sed between them, but the correspondence gradually ceased.
Young Ardworth went to college, prepared by Mr. Fielden, who was no ordinary scholar, and an accurate and profound mathematician,--a more important requisite than cla.s.sical learning in a tutor for Cambridge.
But Ardworth was idle, and perhaps even dissipated. He took a common degree, and made some debts, which were paid by Sir Miles without a murmur. A few letters then pa.s.sed between the baronet and the clergyman as to Ardworth"s future destiny; the latter owned that his pupil was not persevering enough for the Bar, nor steady enough for the Church. These were no great faults in Sir Miles"s eyes. He resolved, after an effort, to judge himself of the capacities of the young man, and so came the invitation to Laughton. Ardworth was greatly surprised when Fielden communicated to him this invitation, for hitherto he had not conceived the slightest suspicion of his benefactor; he had rather, and naturally, supposed that some relation of his father"s had paid for his maintenance at the University, and he knew enough of the family history to look upon Sir Miles as the proudest of men. How was it, then, that he, who would not receive the daughter of Dr. Mivers, his own niece, would invite the nephew of Dr. Mivers, who was no relation to him? However, his curiosity was excited, and Fielden was urgent that he should go; to Laughton, therefore, had he gone.
We have now brought down to the opening of our narrative the general records of the family it concerns; we have reserved our account of the rearing and the character of the personage most important, perhaps, in the development of its events,--Lucretia Clavering,--in order to place singly before the reader the portrait of her dark, misguided, and ill-boding youth.
CHAPTER II. LUCRETIA.
When Lucretia first came to the house of Sir Miles St. John she was an infant about four years old. The baronet then lived princ.i.p.ally in London, with occasional visits rather to the Continent or a watering-place than to his own family mansion. He did not pay any minute attention to his little ward, satisfied that her nurse was sedulous, and her nursery airy and commodious. When, at the age of seven, she began to interest him, and he himself, approaching old age, began seriously to consider whether he should select her as his heiress, for hitherto he had not formed any decided or definite notions on the matter, he was startled by a temper so vehement, so self-willed and sternly imperious, so obstinately bent upon attaining its object, so indifferently contemptuous of warning, reproof, coaxing, or punishment, that her governess honestly came to him in despair.
The management of this unmanageable child interested Sir Miles. It caused him to think of Lucretia seriously; it caused him to have her much in his society, and always in his thoughts. The result was, that by amusing and occupying him, she forced a stronger hold on his affections than she might have done had she been more like the ordinary run of commonplace children. Of all dogs, there is no dog that so attaches a master as a dog that snarls at everybody else,--that no other hand can venture to pat with impunity; of all horses, there is none which so flatters the rider, from Alexander downwards, as a horse that n.o.body else can ride. Extend this principle to the human species, and you may understand why Lucretia became so dear to Sir Miles St. John,--she got at his heart through his vanity. For though, at times, her brow darkened and her eye flashed even at his remonstrance, she was yet no sooner in his society than she made a marked distinction between him and the subordinates who had hitherto sought to control her. Was this affection?
He thought so. Alas! what parent can trace the workings of a child"s mind,--springs moved by an idle word from a nurse; a whispered conference between hirelings. Was it possible that Lucretia had not often been menaced, as the direst evil that could befall her, with her uncle"s displeasure; that long before she could be sensible of mere worldly loss or profit, she was not impressed with a vague sense of Sir Miles"s power over her fate,--nay, when trampling, in childish wrath and scorn, upon some menial"s irritable feelings, was it possible that she had not been told that, but for Sir Miles, she would be little better than a servant herself? Be this as it may, all weakness is p.r.o.ne to dissimulate; and rare and happy is the child whose feelings are as pure and transparent as the fond parent deems them. There is something in children, too, which seems like an instinctive deference to the aristocratic appearances which sway the world. Sir Miles"s stately person, his imposing dress, the respect with which he was surrounded, all tended to beget notions of superiority and power, to which it was no shame to succ.u.mb, as it was to Miss Black, the governess, whom the maids answered pertly, or Martha, the nurse, whom Miss Black snubbed if Lucretia tore her frock.
Sir Miles"s affection once won, his penetration not, perhaps, blinded to her more evident faults, but his self-love soothed towards regarding them leniently, there was much in Lucretia"s external gifts which justified the predilection of the haughty man. As a child she was beautiful, and, perhaps from her very imperfections of temper, her beauty had that air of distinction which the love of command is apt to confer. If Sir Miles was with his friends when Lucretia swept into the room, he was pleased to hear them call her their little "princess," and was pleased yet more at a certain dignified tranquillity with which she received their caresses or their toys, and which he regarded as the sign of a superior mind; nor was it long, indeed, before what we call "a superior mind" developed itself in the young Lucretia. All children are quick till they are set methodically to study; but Lucretia"s quickness defied even that numbing ordeal, by which half of us are rendered dunces. Rapidity and precision in all the tasks set to her, in the comprehension of all the explanations given to her questions, evinced singular powers of readiness and reasoning.
As she grew older, she became more reserved and thoughtful. Seeing but few children of her own age, and mixing intimately with none, her mind was debarred from the usual objects which distract the vivacity, the restless and wondrous observation, of childhood. She came in and out of Sir Miles"s library of a morning, or his drawing-room of an evening, till her hour for rest, with unquestioned and sometimes unnoticed freedom; she listened to the conversation around her, and formed her own conclusions unchecked. It has a great influence upon a child, whether for good or for evil, to mix early and habitually with those grown up,--for good to the mere intellect always; the evil depends upon the character and discretion of those the child sees and hears. "Reverence the greatest is due to the children," exclaims the wisest of the Romans [Cicero. The sentiment is borrowed by Juvenal.],--that is to say, that we must revere the candour and inexperience and innocence of their minds.
Now, Sir Miles"s habitual a.s.sociates were persons of the world,--well-bred and decorous, indeed, before children, as the best of the old school were, avoiding all anecdotes; all allusions, for which the prudent matron would send her girls out of the room; but with that reserve speaking of the world as the world goes: if talking of young A----, calculating carelessly what he would have when old A----, his father, died; naturally giving to wealth and station and ability their fixed importance in life; not over-apt to single out for eulogium some quiet goodness; rather inclined to speak with irony of pretensions to virtue; rarely speaking but with respect of the worldly seemings which rule mankind. All these had their inevitable effect upon that keen, quick, yet moody and reflective intellect.
Sir Miles removed at last to Laughton. He gave up London,--why, he acknowledged not to himself; but it was because he had outlived his age.
Most of his old set were gone; new hours, new habits, had stolen in.
He had ceased to be of importance as a marrying man, as a personage of fas.h.i.+on; his health was impaired; he shrank from the fatigues of a contested election; he resigned his seat in parliament for his native county; and once settled at Laughton, the life there soothed and flattered him,--there all his former claims to distinction were still fresh. He amused himself by collecting, in his old halls and chambers, his statues and pictures, and felt that, without fatigue or trouble, he was a greater man at Laughton in his old age than he had been in London during his youth.
Lucretia was then thirteen. Three years afterwards, Olivier Dalibard was established in the house; and from that time a great change became noticeable in her. The irregular vehemence of her temper gradually subsided, and was replaced by an habitual self-command which rendered the rare deviations from it more effective and imposing. Her pride changed its character wholly and permanently; no word, no look of scorn to the low-born and the poor escaped her. The masculine studies which her erudite tutor opened to a grasping and inquisitive mind, elevated her very errors above the petty distinctions of cla.s.s. She imbibed earnestly what Dalibard a.s.sumed or felt,--the more dangerous pride of the fallen angel,--and set up the intellect as a deity. All belonging to the mere study of mind charmed and enchained her; but active and practical in her very reveries, if she brooded, it was to scheme, to plot, to weave, web, and mesh, and to smile in haughty triumph at her own ingenuity and daring. The first lesson of mere worldly wisdom teaches us to command temper; it was worldly wisdom that made the once impetuous girl calm, tranquil, and serene. Sir Miles was pleased by a change that removed from Lucretia"s outward character its chief blot,--perhaps, as his frame declined, he sighed sometimes to think that with so much majesty there appeared but little tenderness; he took, however, the merits with the faults, and was content upon the whole.
If the Provencal had taken more than common pains with his young pupil, the pains were not solely disinterested. In plunging her mind amidst that profound corruption which belongs only to intellect cultivated in scorn of good and in suppression of heart, he had his own views to serve. He watched the age when the pa.s.sions ripen, and he grasped at the fruit which his training sought to mature. In the human heart ill regulated there is a dark desire for the forbidden. This Lucretia felt; this her studies cherished, and her thoughts brooded over. She detected, with the quickness of her s.e.x, the preceptor"s stealthy aim. She started not at the danger. Proud of her mastery over herself, she rather triumphed in luring on into weakness this master-intelligence which had lighted up her own,--to see her slave in her teacher; to despise or to pity him whom she had first contemplated with awe. And with this mere pride of the understanding might be connected that of the s.e.x; she had attained the years when woman is curious to know and to sound her power.
To inflame Dalibard"s cupidity or ambition was easy; but to touch his heart,--that marble heart!--this had its dignity and its charm. Strange to say, she succeeded; the pa.s.sion, as well as interests, of this dangerous and able man became enlisted in his hopes. And now the game played between them had a terror in its suspense; for if Dalibard penetrated not into the recesses of his pupil"s complicated nature, she was far from having yet sounded the h.e.l.l that lay, black and devouring, beneath his own. Not through her affections,--those he scarce hoped for,--but through her inexperience, her vanity, her pa.s.sions, he contemplated the path to his victory over her soul and her fate. And so resolute, so wily, so unscrupulous was this person, who had played upon all the subtlest keys and chords in the scale of turbulent life, that, despite the lofty smile with which Lucretia at length heard and repelled his suit, he had no fear of the ultimate issue, when all his projects were traversed, all his mines and stratagems abruptly brought to a close, by an event which he had wholly unforeseen,--the appearance of a rival; the ardent and almost purifying love, which, escaping a while from all the demons he had evoked, she had, with a girl"s frank heart and impulse, conceived for Mainwaring. And here, indeed, was the great crisis in Lucretia"s life and destiny. So interwoven with her nature had become the hard calculations of the understanding; so habitual to her now was the zest for scheming, which revels in the play and vivacity of intrigue and plot, and which Shakspeare has perhaps intended chiefly to depict in the villany of Iago,--that it is probable Lucretia could never become a character thoroughly amiable and honest. But with a happy and well-placed love, her ambition might have had legitimate vents; her restless energies, the woman"s natural field in sympathies for another.
The heart, once opened, softens by use; gradually and unconsciously the interchange of affection, the companions.h.i.+p with an upright and ingenuous mind (for virtue is not only beautiful, it is contagious), might have had their redeeming and hallowing influence. Happier, indeed, had it been, if her choice had fallen upon a more commanding and lofty nature! But perhaps it was the very meekness and susceptibility of Mainwaring"s temper, relieved from feebleness by his talents, which, once in play, were undeniably great, that pleased her by contrast with her own hardness of spirit and despotism of will.
That Sir Miles should have been blind to the position of the lovers is less disparaging to his penetration than it may appear; for the very imprudence with which Lucretia abandoned herself to the society of Mainwaring during his visits at Laughton took a resemblance to candour.
Sir Miles knew his niece to be more than commonly clever and well informed; that she, like him, should feel that the conversation of a superior young man was a relief to the ordinary babble of their country neighbours, was natural enough; and if now and then a doubt, a fear, had crossed his mind and rendered him more touched than he liked to own by Vernon"s remarks, it had vanished upon perceiving that Lucretia never seemed a shade more pensive in Mainwaring"s absence. The listlessness and the melancholy which are apt to accompany love, especially where unpropitiously placed, were not visible on the surface of this strong nature. In truth, once a.s.sured that Mainwaring returned her affection, Lucretia reposed on the future with a calm and resolute confidence; and her customary dissimulation closed like an unruffled sea over all the undercurrents that met and played below. Still, Sir Miles"s attention once, however slightly, aroused to the recollection that Lucretia was at the age when woman naturally meditates upon love and marriage, had suggested, afresh and more vividly, a project which had before been indistinctly conceived,--namely, the union of the divided branches of his house, by the marriage of the last male of the Vernons with the heiress of the St. Johns. Sir Miles had seen much of Vernon himself at various intervals; he had been present at his christening, though he had refused to be his G.o.dfather, for fear of raising undue expectations; he had visited and munificently "tipped" him at Eton; he had accompanied him to his quarters when he joined the prince"s regiment; he had come often in contact with him when, at the death of his father, Vernon retired from the army and blazed in the front ranks of metropolitan fas.h.i.+on; he had given him counsel and had even lent him money. Vernon"s spendthrift habits and dissipated if not dissolute life had certainly confirmed the old baronet in his intentions to trust the lands of Laughton to the lesser risk which property incurs in the hands of a female, if tightly settled on her, than in the more colossal and multiform luxuries of an expensive man; and to do him justice, during the flush of Vernon"s riotous career he had shrunk from the thought of confiding the happiness of his niece to so unstable a partner. But of late, whether from his impaired health or his broken fortunes, Vernon"s follies had been less glaring. He had now arrived at the mature age of thirty-three, when wild oats may reasonably be sown. The composed and steadfast character of Lucretia might serve to guide and direct him; and Sir Miles was one of those who hold the doctrine that a reformed rake makes the best husband. Add to this, there was nothing in Vernon"s reputation--once allowing that his thirst for pleasure was slaked--which could excite serious apprehensions. Through all his difficulties, he had maintained his honour unblemished; a thousand traits of amiability and kindness of heart made him popular and beloved. He was n.o.body"s enemy but his own. His very distresses--the prospect of his ruin, if left una.s.sisted by Sir Miles"s testamentary dispositions--were arguments in his favour. And, after all, though Lucretia was a nearer relation, Vernon was in truth the direct male heir, and according to the usual prejudices of family, therefore, the fitter representative of the ancient line. With these feelings and views, he had invited Vernon to his house, and we have seen already that his favourable impressions had been confirmed by the visit.
And here we must say that Vernon himself had been brought up in boyhood and youth to regard himself the presumptive inheritor of Laughton. It had been, from time immemorial, the custom of the St. Johns to pa.s.s by the claims of females in the settlement of the entails; from male to male the estate had gone, furnis.h.i.+ng warriors to the army, and senators to the State. And if when Lucretia first came to Sir Miles"s house the bright prospect seemed somewhat obscure, still the mesalliance of the mother, and Sir Miles"s obstinate resentment thereat, seemed to warrant the supposition that he would probably only leave to the orphan the usual portion of a daughter of the house, and that the lands would go in their ordinary destination. This belief, adopted pa.s.sively, and as a thing of course, had had a very prejudicial effect upon Vernon"s career.
What mattered that he overenjoyed his youth, that the subordinate property of the Vernons, a paltry four or five thousand pounds a year, went a little too fast,--the splendid estates of Laughton would recover all. From this dream he had only been awakened, two or three years before, by an attachment he had formed to the portionless daughter of an earl; and the Grange being too far enc.u.mbered to allow him the proper settlements which the lady"s family required, it became a matter of importance to ascertain Sir Miles"s intentions. Too delicate himself to sound them, he had prevailed upon the earl, who was well acquainted with Sir Miles, to take Laughton in his way to his own seat in Dorsets.h.i.+re, and, without betraying the grounds of his interest in the question, learn carelessly, as it were, the views of the wealthy man. The result had been a severe and terrible disappointment. Sir Miles had then fully determined upon const.i.tuting Lucretia his heiress; and with the usual openness of his character, he had plainly said so upon the very first covert and polished allusion to the subject which the earl slyly made.
This discovery, in breaking off all hopes of a union with Lady Mary Stanville, had crushed more than mercenary expectations. It affected, through his heart, Vernon"s health and spirits; it rankled deep, and was resented at first as a fatal injury. But Vernon"s native n.o.bility of disposition gradually softened an indignation which his reason convinced him was groundless and unjust. Sir Miles had never encouraged the expectations which Vernon"s family and himself had unthinkingly formed.
The baronet was master of his own fortune, and after all, was it not more natural that he should prefer the child he had brought up and reared, to a distant relation, little more than an acquaintance, simply because man succeeded to man in the mouldy pedigree of the St. Johns?
And, Mary fairly lost to him, his const.i.tutional indifference to money, a certain French levity of temper, a persuasion that his life was nearing its wasted close, had left him without regret, as without resentment, at his kinsman"s decision. His boyish affection for the hearty, generous old gentleman returned, and though he abhorred the country, he had, without a single interested thought or calculation, cordially accepted the baronet"s hospitable overtures, and deserted, for the wilds of Hamps.h.i.+re, "the sweet shady side of Pall-Mall."
We may now enter the drawing-room at Laughton, in which were already a.s.sembled several of the families residing in the more immediate neighbourhood, and who sociably dropped in to chat around the national tea-table, play a rubber at whist, or make up, by the help of two or three children and two or three grandpapas, a merry country-dance; for in that happy day people were much more sociable than they are now in the houses of our rural Thanes. Our country seats became bustling and animated after the Birthday; many even of the more important families resided, indeed, all the year round on their estates. The Continent was closed to us; the fastidious exclusiveness which comes from habitual residence in cities had not made that demarcation, in castes and in talk, between neighbour and neighbour, which exists now. Our squires were less educated, less refined, but more hospitable and una.s.suming.
In a word, there was what does not exist now, except in some districts remote from London,--a rural society for those who sought it.
The party, as we enter, is grouped somewhat thus. But first we must cast a glance at the room itself, which rarely failed to be the first object to attract a stranger"s notice. It was a long, and not particularly well-proportioned apartment,--according, at least, to modern notions,--for it had rather the appearance of two rooms thrown into one.
At the distance of about thirty-five feet, the walls, before somewhat narrow, were met by an arch, supported by carved pilasters, which opened into a s.p.a.ce nearly double the width of the previous part of the room, with a domed ceiling and an embayed window of such depth that the recess almost formed a chamber in itself. But both these divisions of the apartment corresponded exactly in point of decoration,--they had the same small panelling, painted a very light green, which seemed almost white by candlelight, each compartment wrought with an arabesque; the same enriched frieze and cornice; they had the same high mantelpieces, ascending to the ceiling, with the arms of St. John in bold relief. They had, too, the same old-fas.h.i.+oned and venerable furniture, draperies of thick figured velvet, with immense chairs and sofas to correspond,--interspersed, it is true, with more modern and commodious inventions of the upholsterer"s art, in grave stuffed leather or lively chintz. Two windows, nearly as deep as that in the farther division, broke the outline of the former one, and helped to give that irregular and nooky appearance to the apartment which took all discomfort from its extent, and furnished all convenience for solitary study or detached flirtation. With little respect for the carved work of the panels, the walls were covered with pictures brought by Sir Miles from Italy; here and there marble busts and statues gave lightness to the character of the room, and harmonized well with that half-Italian mode of decoration which belongs to the period of James the First. The shape of the chamber, in its divisions, lent itself admirably to that friendly and sociable intermixture of amus.e.m.e.nts which reconciles the tastes of young and old. In the first division, near the fireplace, Sir Miles, seated in his easy-chair, and sheltered from the opening door by a seven-fold tapestry screen, was still at chess with his librarian. At a little distance a middle-aged gentleman and three turbaned matrons were cutting in at whist, s.h.i.+lling points, with a half-crown bet optional, and not much ventured on. On tables, drawn into the recesses of the windows, were the day"s newspapers, Gilray"s caricatures, the last new publications, and such other ingenious suggestions to chit-chat. And round these tables grouped those who had not yet found elsewhere their evening"s amus.e.m.e.nt,--two or three shy young clergymen, the parish doctor, four or five squires who felt great interest in politics, but never dreamed of the extravagance of taking in a daily paper, and who now, monopolizing all the journals they could find, began fairly with the heroic resolution to skip nothing, from the first advertis.e.m.e.nt to the printer"s name. Amidst one of these groups Mainwaring had bashfully ensconced himself. In the farther division, the chandelier, suspended from the domed ceiling, threw its cheerful light over a large circular table below, on which gleamed the ponderous tea-urn of ma.s.sive silver, with its usual accompaniments. Nor were wanting there, in addition to those airy nothings, sliced infinitesimally, from a French roll, the more substantial and now exiled cheer of cakes,--plum and seed, Yorks.h.i.+re and saffron,--attesting the light hand of the housekeeper and the strong digestion of the guests. Round this table were seated, in full gossip, the maids and the matrons, with a slight sprinkling of the bolder young gentlemen who had been taught to please the fair. The warmth of the evening allowed the upper cas.e.m.e.nt to be opened and the curtains drawn aside, and the July moonlight feebly struggled against the blaze of the lights within. At this table it was Miss Clavering"s obvious duty to preside; but that was a complaisance to which she rarely condescended. Nevertheless, she had her own way of doing the honour of her uncle"s house, which was not without courtesy and grace; to glide from one to the other, exchange a few friendly words, see that each set had its well-known amus.e.m.e.nts, and, finally, sit quietly down to converse with some who, from gravity or age, appeared most to neglect or be neglected by the rest, was her ordinary, and not unpopular mode of welcoming the guests at Laughton,--not unpopular; for she thus avoided all interference with the flirtations and conquests of humbler damsels, whom her station and her endowments might otherwise have crossed or humbled, while she insured the good word of the old, to whom the young are seldom so attentive. But if a stranger of more than provincial repute chanced to be present; if some stray member of parliament, or barrister on the circuit, or wandering artist, accompanied any of the neighbours,--to him Lucretia gave more earnest and undivided attention.
Him she sought to draw into a conversation deeper than the usual babble, and with her calm, searching eyes, bent on him while he spoke, seemed to fathom the intellect she set in play. But as yet, this evening, she had not made her appearance,--a sin against etiquette very unusual in her.
Perhaps her recent conversation with Dalibard had absorbed her thoughts to forgetfulness of the less important demands on her attention. Her absence had not interfered with the gayety at the tea-table, which was frank even to noisiness as it centred round the laughing face of Ardworth, who, though unknown to most or all of the ladies present, beyond a brief introduction to one or two of the first comers from Sir Miles (as the host had risen from his chess to bid them welcome), had already contrived to make himself perfectly at home and outrageously popular. Niched between two bouncing la.s.ses, he had commenced acquaintance with them in a strain of familiar drollery and fun, which had soon broadened its circle, and now embraced the whole group in the happy contagion of good-humour and young animal spirits. Gabriel, allowed to sit up later than his usual hour, had not, as might have been expected, attached himself to this circle, nor indeed to any; he might be seen moving quietly about,--now contemplating the pictures on the wall with a curious eye; now pausing at the whist-table, and noting the game with the interest of an embryo gamester; now throwing himself on an ottoman, and trying to coax towards him Dash or Ponto,--trying in vain, for both the dogs abhorred him; yet still, through all this general movement, had any one taken the pains to observe him closely, it might have been sufficiently apparent that his keen, bright, restless eye, from the corner of its long, sly lids, roved chiefly towards the three persons whom he approached the least,--his father, Mainwaring, and Mr.
Vernon. This last had ensconced himself apart from all, in the angle formed by one of the pilasters of the arch that divided the room, so that he was in command, as it were, of both sections. Reclined, with the careless grace that seemed inseparable from every att.i.tude and motion of his person, in one of the great velvet chairs, with a book in his hand, which, to say truth, was turned upside down, but in the lecture of which he seemed absorbed, he heard at one hand the mirthful laughter that circled round young Ardworth, or, in its pauses, caught, on the other side, muttered exclamations from the grave whist-players: "If you had but trumped that diamond, ma"am!" "Bless me, sir, it was the best heart!" And somehow or other, both the laughter and the exclamations affected him alike with what then was called "the spleen,"--for the one reminded him of his own young days of joyless, careless mirth, of which his mechanical gayety now was but a mocking ghost; and the other seemed a satire, a parody, on the fierce but noiseless rapture of gaming, through which his pa.s.sions had pa.s.sed, when thousands had slipped away with a bland smile, provoking not one of those natural ebullitions of emotion which there accompanied the loss of a s.h.i.+lling point. And besides this, Vernon had been so accustomed to the success of the drawing-room, to be a somebody and a something in the company of wits and princes, that he felt, for the first time, a sense of insignificance in this provincial circle. Those fat squires had heard nothing of Mr.
Vernon, except that he would not have Laughton,--he had no acres, no vote in their county; he was a n.o.body to them. Those ruddy maidens, though now and then, indeed, one or two might steal an admiring glance at a figure of elegance so unusual, regarded him not with the female interest he had been accustomed to inspire. They felt instinctively that he could be nothing to them, nor they to him,--a mere London fop, and not half so handsome as Squires Bluff and Chuff.
Rousing himself from this little vexation to his vanity with a conscious smile at his own weakness, Vernon turned his looks towards the door, waiting for Lucretia"s entrance, and since her uncle"s address to him, feeling that new and indescribable interest in her appearance which is apt to steal into every breast when what was before but an indifferent acquaintance, is suddenly enhaloed with the light of a possible wife.
At length the door opened, and Lucretia entered. Mr. Vernon lowered his book, and gazed with an earnestness that partook both of doubt and admiration.
Lucretia Clavering was tall,--tall beyond what is admitted to be tall in woman; but in her height there was nothing either awkward or masculine,--a figure more perfect never served for model to a sculptor.
The dress at that day, unbecoming as we now deem it, was not to her--at least, on the whole disadvantageous. The short waist gave greater sweep to her majestic length of limb, while the cla.s.sic thinness of the drapery betrayed the exact proportion and the exquisite contour. The arms then were worn bare almost to the shoulder, and Lucretia"s arms were not more faultless in shape than dazzling in their snowy colour; the stately neck, the falling shoulders, the firm, slight, yet rounded bust,--all would have charmed equally the artist and the sensualist.
Fortunately, the sole defect of her form was not apparent at a distance: that defect was in the hand; it had not the usual faults of female youthfulness,--the superfluity of flesh, the too rosy healthfulness of colour,--on the contrary, it was small and thin; but it was, nevertheless, more the hand of a man than a woman: the shape had a man"s nervous distinctness, the veins swelled like sinews, the joints of the fingers were marked and prominent. In that hand it almost seemed as if the iron force of the character betrayed itself. But, as we have said, this slight defect, which few, if seen, would hypercritically notice, could not, of course, be perceptible as she moved slowly up the room; and Vernon"s eye, glancing over the n.o.ble figure, rested upon the face. Was it handsome? Was it repelling? Strange that in feature it had pretensions to the highest order of beauty, and yet even that experienced connoisseur in female charms was almost as puzzled what sentence to p.r.o.nounce. The hair, as was the fas.h.i.+on of the day, cl.u.s.tered in profuse curls over the forehead, but could not conceal a slight line or wrinkle between the brows; and this line, rare in women at any age, rare even in men at hers, gave an expression at once of thought and sternness to the whole face. The eyebrows themselves were straight, and not strongly marked, a shade or two perhaps too light,--a fault still more apparent in the lashes; the eyes were large, full, and though bright, astonis.h.i.+ngly calm and deep,--at least in ordinary moments; yet withal they wanted the charm of that steadfast and open look which goes at once to the heart and invites its trust,--their expression was rather vague and abstracted. She usually looked aslant while she spoke, and this, which with some appears but shyness, in one so self-collected had an air of falsehood. But when, at times, if earnest, and bent rather on examining those she addressed than guarding herself from penetration, she fixed those eyes upon you with sudden and direct scrutiny, the gaze impressed you powerfully, and haunted you with a strange spell. The eye itself was of a peculiar and displeasing colour,--not blue, nor gray, nor black, nor hazel, but rather of that cat-like green which is drowsy in the light, and vivid in the shade.
The profile was purely Greek, and so seen, Lucretia"s beauty seemed incontestable; but in front face, and still more when inclined between the two, all the features took a sharpness that, however regular, had something chilling and severe: the mouth was small, but the lips were thin and pale, and had an expression of effort and contraction which added to the distrust that her sidelong glance was calculated to inspire. The teeth were dazzlingly white, but sharp and thin, and the eye-teeth were much longer than the rest. The complexion was pale, but without much delicacy,--the paleness seemed not natural to it, but rather that hue which study and late vigils give to men; so that she wanted the freshness and bloom of youth, and looked older than she was,--an effect confirmed by an absence of roundness in the cheek not noticeable in the profile, but rendering the front face somewhat harsh as well as sharp. In a word, the face and the figure were not in harmony: the figure prevented you from p.r.o.nouncing her to be masculine; the face took from the figure the charm of feminacy. It was the head of the young Augustus upon the form of Agrippina. One touch more, and we close a description which already perhaps the reader may consider frivolously minute. If you had placed before the mouth and lower part of the face a mask or bandage, the whole character of the upper face would have changed at once,--the eye lost its glittering falseness, the brow its sinister contraction; you would have p.r.o.nounced the face not only beautiful, but sweet and womanly. Take that bandage suddenly away and the change would have startled you, and startled you the more because you could detect no sufficient defect or disproportion in the lower part of the countenance to explain it. It was as if the mouth was the key to the whole: the key nothing without the text, the text uncomprehended without the key.
Such, then, was Lucretia Clavering in outward appearance at the age of twenty,--striking to the most careless eye; interesting and perplexing the student in that dark language never yet deciphered,--the human countenance. The reader must have observed that the effect every face that he remarks for the first time produces is different from the impression it leaves upon him when habitually seen. Perhaps no two persons differ more from each other than does the same countenance in our earliest recollection of it from the countenance regarded in the familiarity of repeated intercourse. And this was especially the case with Lucretia Clavering"s: the first impulse of nearly all who beheld it was distrust that partook of fear; it almost inspired you with a sense of danger. The judgment rose up against it; the heart set itself on its guard. But this uneasy sentiment soon died away, with most observers, in admiration at the chiselled outline, which, like the Grecian sculpture, gained the more the more it was examined, in respect for the intellectual power of the expression, and in fascinated pleasure at the charm of a smile, rarely employed, it is true, but the more attractive both for that reason and for its sudden effect in giving brightness and persuasion to an aspect that needed them so much. It was literally like the abrupt breaking out of a sunbeam; and the repellent impression of the face thus familiarized away, the matchless form took its natural influence; so that while one who but saw Lucretia for a moment might have p.r.o.nounced her almost plain, and certainly not prepossessing in appearance, those with whom she lived, those whom she sought to please, those who saw her daily, united in acknowledgment of her beauty; and if they still felt awe, attributed it only to the force of her understanding.
As she now came midway up the room, Gabriel started from his seat and ran to her caressingly. Lucretia bent down, and placed her hand upon his fair locks. As she did so, he whispered,--
"Mr. Vernon has been watching for you."
"Hus.h.!.+ Where is your father?"
"Behind the screen, at chess with Sir Miles."
"With Sir Miles!" and Lucretia"s eye fell, with the direct gaze we have before referred to, upon the boy"s face.
"I have been looking over them pretty often," said he, meaningly: "they have talked of nothing but the game." Lucretia lifted her head, and glanced round with her furtive eye; the boy divined the search, and with a scarce perceptible gesture pointed her attention to Mainwaring"s retreat. Her vivid smile pa.s.sed over her lips as she bowed slightly to her lover, and then, withdrawing the hand which Gabriel had taken in his own, she moved on, pa.s.sed Vernon with a commonplace word or two, and was soon exchanging greetings with the gay merry-makers in the farther part of the room. A few minutes afterwards, the servants entered, the tea-table was removed, chairs were thrust back, a single lady of a certain age volunteered her services at the piano, and dancing began within the ample s.p.a.ce which the arch fenced off from the whist-players.
Vernon had watched his opportunity, and at the first sound of the piano had gained Lucretia"s side, and with grave politeness pre-engaged her hand for the opening dance.
At that day, though it is not so very long ago, gentlemen were not ashamed to dance, and to dance well; it was no languid saunter through a quadrille; it was fair, deliberate, skilful dancing amongst the courtly,--free, bounding movement amongst the gay.
Vernon, as might be expected, was the most admired performer of the evening; but he was thinking very little of the notice he at last excited, he was employing such ingenuity as his experience of life supplied to the deficiencies of a very imperfect education, limited to the little flogged into him at Eton, in deciphering the character and getting at the heart of his fair partner.
"I wonder you do not make Sir Miles take you to London, my cousin, if you will allow me to call you so. You ought to have been presented."
"I have no wish to go to London yet."
"Yet!" said Mr. Vernon, with the somewhat fade gallantry of his day; "beauty even like yours has little time to spare."