Marrying for Beauty. A novel

Front matter

MARRYING FOR BEAUTY | Until. LI MRS. MACKENZIE DANIEL, AUTHOR OF " MT SISTEE MINNIE," " THE OLD MAID OF THE FAMILY," "JAMES WITEEN'S SIN," ETC, EIC. IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. I. LONDON : CHARLES J. SKEET, 10, KING WILLIAM STREET, CHARING CROSS. 1870. [AU High 's reserved.] CONTENTS OF VOL. I. CHAPTER FAOE I. THE SISTERS ... .1 II. THE LEIGHS AND THE NEVILS . . 19 III. BRIDE AND BRIDEGROOM . . .32 IV. A GEEAT EN CHANTRESS . . .47 V. JOHN'S MOTHER . . . .63 VI. Barbara's trust . . . S(3 VII. BT THE BROOK . . . .9(3 VIII. Barbara's toilet. . . . 115 IX. A TRAGIC EVENING. . . . 129 X. THE HOUSE OF MOURNING. . . 152 XI. CYRIL ..... 169 xii. Kate's view of things in general . 185 xiii. husband and master . . . 199 xiv. a very fair penitent . . . 216 XV. MORE OF katherine's TROUELES . . 237 XVI. BROTHER AND SISTER . . . 253 XVII. AN EVENING EN FAMILLE . . . 272 XVIII. ON THE TREE TOP .... MARRYING FOR BEAUTY.

Chapter I. The Sisters

It was raining fiercely and heavily on a cold April afternoon, and as the slanting showers fell, they beat noisily against the library windows of an old fashioned country house, Avhere two girls sat by a half extinguished fire, looking, both of them, as if the weather, or some thing else, was just then interfering seriously with their aj>preciation of existence. " "What a regular beast of a day !" said at length the elder of the sisters, lifting a very classical head abruptly from a jtiece of work with which she had been trjnng vainly to amuse herself. " I am quite sure, Bab, that Mariana in the Moated Grange never felt half so desolate and miserable as I do. It vol. i. stands to reason that she could not, you knoAV, because she had got used to the solitude and the rusty nails, and the black moss, and all the rest of it, Avhile I have only lost Percival since the day before yesterday.

Oh dear, oh dear ! what is the use of living at all if one can't have things a little cheerful and pleasant? I give you my honour, Bab, I don't know Avhat to do Avith myself, I am so awfully miserable." " I Avish you wouldn't be, then, just at the present moment," replied the other girl, with out looking up from a somewhat untidy exercise book, in Avhich she had been notching down figures, apparently at random, for the last hour or more, " for I did so Avant you to help me with this abominable and preposterous sum that Miss Lamb has given me to work out by teatime. She always sets me such impossible and ridiculous tasks when she goes to lie doAvn with one of her headaches. I do believe she can't bear that anybody should be comfortable while she is uncomfortable herself, and as I am the only person in the house over Avhom she has any control, I am naturally her victim.

Now just listen, Katherine, to the absurd arithmetical question Miss Lamb has written out for me — " " Miss Lamb be hanged !" interrupted Katherine, sharply and disrespectfully. "What can I remember of arithmetic, when it is three years, at least, since I left the school-room? Throw the whole concern into the fire, Barbara, if you don't like it, and tell Miss Lamb you acted on my advice. Governesses are the greatest bores in creation, except Indian ap.«. pointments for younger sons, and they arc a few degrees worse. How stupid we haATe been to let this fire get so low. I am shivering with cold, and I am sure it never means to leave off raining' again. " What o'clock is it, I AATonder ?" " Nearly four, I declare," said Barbara, re lieving her sister of the trouble of looking at a very elegant timepiece on the mantleshelf aboA'e them, " and not a single row of figures, right or wrong, under this detestable problem yet.

Oh, Kate, you must help me for this once, whether you are miserable or not. Misery will keep, and sums Avon't, you know, not, at least, Avhen they are set by Miss Lamb under the influence of headache. Look here, ' If ninety-nine gallons of cider cost three pounds eleven shillings and tenpence, what would four gallons and a half, at the same rate, cost ?' I 1 o 1 .W daresay now it is easy enough if one only knew how and where to begin, but I have no head for figures, and you, being a genius, Kate, can't have forgotten everything. Do, there's a dear, tell me what to put down first, and after that, you shall talk to me about Percival and your own misery for the rest of the day. You know I am a capital listener." The stately and apparently imperious Kath erine replied to this appeal by snatching both the copy-book and ink-smeared pen from her sister's hands and throwing them into what remained of the library fire, which blazed up merrily for a few seconds under the unexpected stimulus, and then became duller and more hopeless looking than before.

" Now don't make a fuss, Barbara, for your trouble is at an end for to-day, and you are welcome to lay all the blame to me. The wrath of fifty Miss Lambs could not add one iota to my present desolation, and you might have known that when the heart is sore op pressed it cannot endure to be worried with frivolous and vexatious questions on the sub ject of cider. You are over fifteen, Bab, and I am sure at that age, and even before it, I un derstood what it was to have the whole soul bound up in one object, and should have shrunk from intruding upon a sorrow like mine, on any but the most urgent pretext. You are not baby enough to regret that miserable old copy-book, surely ?" This last clause was in answer to a troubled, uneasy look in Barbara's young slice that ap peared only just to have arrested the elder sister's notice.

" I am very sorry you have burnt it, Kate," she said, gravely, " because, though Miss Lamb is strict and tiresome enough at times, I do not care to vex her intentionally, and this will vex her, I am certain. HoAvever, never mind since the deed is done. Shall we ring and have the fire made up and settle ourselve.. for a good talk, or is there anything you would like better to do till mine and Miss Lamb's tea time ?" " I will go and see if mamma has finished those weary letters," replied Katherine, rising lazily, and yawning as so very elegant a young lady would have been supposed scarcely capa ble of doing (except under the provocation of her lover's recent departure for India,) " and you will be free to amuse yourself in any way you may choose. Set down the burnt copybook to my account, and I will beard the ogress in her den at tea-time.

Only do be happy, child, as long as you can for the shadows will come upon you fast enough by and bye, and darker ones, I am afraid, my pretty Barbara, than the valuation of a whole county full of cider." With which cheerful prophecy for her sister capping the tender pity for herself Avhich had preceded it, Katherine Leigh, in her faultless morning toilet and elaborately dressed hair, sailed languidly out of the room, leaving the somewhat rough and outspoken school-girl, Barbara, to meditate at her leisure on the supreme advantages of being a grown-up and engaged young lady. What her meditations really were on this and other subjects as, for quite half an hour after her sister's departure, she sat with her elbows on her knees and her head between her hands, gazing wistfully at the burnt cinders in the grate, we need not linger now to enquire.

At the end of the half hour there came through the windows behind her a sudden gleam of watery and rather uncertain sunshine, but it was quite enough to give a fresh impetus to Barbara's sober and to some extent discontented thoughts. She A\Tas a young person of quick impulses, as might be gathered from the fact of her starting up abruptly, rushing out into the hall, attiring herself in a garden hat and cloak of not very elegant fashion that was hanging in a particular corn.r, and finally tucking up her dress — not becomingly, indeed, but Avith some instinctive deference to the spirit of order and neatness — and then making a rapid descent from the broad, graArelled terrace surrounding the house into the damp shrubberies, and across the saturated lawn, down a winding path of ilex and arbutus trees that looked fresh and loArely from the April rains, and into a tolerably thick Avood that formed the southern boundary of the Leigh Court pleasure grounds, and led both to the high road and to an interminable succession of meadows, and closes, and pasture lands of various kinds, belonging to the estate.

But it was only to note the progress of some common primroses and violets which she had discovered a week or two ago in a little sheltered hollow at the entrance of the Avood, that Barbara Leigh had had come here in such haste this cold April afternoon. She had a girl's passion for wild flowers, and especially for the first of the spring. To her they were worth infinitely more than all the expensively cultivated treasures of her father's hot-houses, and little did it signify to her that Katherine ridiculed the childish and plebeian taste, and predicted — Kate, you see, was fond of playing the prophetess — that in a few years she Avould count the time all lost that she had spent in hunting for early violets, and be content to receive her roses and camellias from the gar dener's or a lover's hands.

Then Barbara would laugh softly to herself and say, " That's as hereafter may be, Kate . for the present leave me my taste for wild flowers, and keep the roses and camellias for your own beautiful hair. They shoAv to ad vantage in it." Which was true, for Katherine Leigh had a vast wealth of dark shining hair, which a poet would have compared in hue to the raven's Aving, and which a painter might have been proud to have successfully imitated with his finest colours. This, and the classical shape of her head and her graceful figure, were Miss Leigh's chief attractions, though the face Avas a handsome one, too, of the somewhat haughty type, and not without a certain sweetness when the imperious will Avas not crossed, nor the quick, undisciplined temper in any Avay irritated. Barbara loved her sister dearly, and loved her as much for her waywardness and caprices as for her better qualities ; but then, as Ave have seen, this little lady was not endowed Avith extraordinary discrimination — witness her strange preference for a common primrose or violet root over all the choice exotics of the Leigh Court conservatories.

On the present occasion she was amply rewarded for her race through the wet shrubberies by finding half-a-dozen large purple violets and as many pale golden primroses ready to be gathered ; and after bending over them for a few seconds in childish delight, she nipped off each flower very carefully, bound them together Avith a blade of grass, and saying to herself, " Poor Miss Lamb will forget her headache AA'hen she smells these," started off merrily on her homeward way, and thought no more of the burnt copy-book and the neg lected sum till at five o'clock the school-room bell summoned her into her governess's presence. Half an hour later, while the two sat together at the tea-table, Katherine burst into the apartment in all the rustling elegance of her evening attire, and looking as animated and happy as so short a time back she had looked depressed and miserable.

" Good evening, Miss Lamb," she said, noticing the pale, middle-aged lady who pre sided at the tea-tray, and Avas enveloped in a large shawl, as slightly and carelessly as pos sible, " I hope your headache is better by this time. Bab, my dear, give me a strong cup of tea, and cut me a nice thin slice of bread and butter. Thank goodness, you have a good fire here, for I am perished to death, through mamma's absurd notion that bed-room fires must be left off in April. I have such neAvs for you when I have drunk my tea ; but how about the famous cider question ? Did you tell Miss Lamb what I did with your book ?" " Barbara has given me no explanation con cerning the loss of the copy-book," replied the pale governess a little stiffly, for being but human, she could not but resent, in some de gree, the fact that Miss Leigh had waited for no answer to her careless inquiry concerning the headache.

" I presumed, hoAvever, that she herself was not greatly to blame in the matter." "Dear little Bab!" exclaimed Katherine, impulsively, " you are no tell-tale, I will say that for you. The truth is, Miss Lamb, you had given the child a task that bored her to death, and that bored me, too, in a A-icarious sort of manner ; and as I have a whole world full of trouble on my poor shoulders just now, I could not afford to add even a straw's weight to the burden, therefore I adopted the sum mary measure of throwing the book behind the library fire. I will buy Barbara another and a cleaner one, and you must set down this new offence of mine under the formidable list of sins and misdemeanours you used to have against me." There was enough of graciousness in the manner, if not in the matter, of this speech to disarm the anger of a lady who had endured humiliations and insolences at the hands of her employers for more than a quarter of a century, and might therefore be supposed to have become tolerably seasoned to this sort of thing.

She lifted now her suffering head a moment from her tea-cup, and only flushed a little as she said— " Miss Leigh has passed too long beyond any authority of mine for me to claim a right to pronounce judgment on the simplest of her actions." " Now I'm sure all's well that ends well !" exclaimed Barbara, hastening to throw herself into the breach before Katherine had a chance of replying either arrogantly or tauntingly to the slightly aggrieved speech of her old go verness. " If the copy-book had not been burnt I should never have gone to the wood for my flowers, and you know, Miss Lamb, dear, they have done you a Avorld of good, and that you mean to put them under your pillow to night that you may dream about them." "They are very sweet, indeed, Barbara," said the pale lady, a sickly smile lighting up her face for an instant, and suggesting that it might once have been fair and pleasant to the beholder.

" It is a weakness of mine to think so much of wood violets and primroses, but I never can smell their delicate perfume without being carried back, in spirit, to the days of my youth, and the lanes behind that old Rectory in Devonshire, where my sisters and myself used to gather the early Avild flowers for our poor sick mamma. When you get to my age, my dear young ladies, you will discover,* per haps, as I have done, that memory is about the only pleasure-giving faculty left to us." " Oh, for gracious sake, my good Miss Lamb, don't be getting romantic and sentimental just now" — (Miss Leigh had no notion of anybody but herself indulging in pathos or sentimentality) — "or I shall be plunging headlong into the darkest abyss of melancholy again. This is a capital cup of tea, Bab, though I see you have given me the best of the pot, and are drinking the dregs yourself.

What a shame, when I shall be dining in half an hour. But about the choice bit of neAvs I told you I had got for you. Guess Avho is coming in a Aveek's time to stay with us." "Who?" questioned Barbara, setting down the cup of tepid and but slightly coloured liquid, which Katherine's fancy for tea had entailed upon the younger sister ; " nobody very particular, I suppose." " Then you suppose wrong, my dear, for it is John Nevil, with his bride, Lady Rosa mond. They are just finishing their wedding tour ; and mamma, it seems, sent the invitation through old Mr. Nevil. I am sure I don't know what possessed ber to do it, unless she thinks there will be some eclat in enter taining Lady Rosamond. I daresay it will be very jolly having them here, for John wrote in return a very charming letter, expressing himself delighted to come to Leigh Court for a week or two, to make the acquaintance, especially, he added, of his brother's future wife.

Only think, Bab, how I shall be criticised and taken to pieces — morally, mentally, and phy sically. Not that I am a bit afraid," added the young lady, raising her graceful head and looking quite prepared to challenge the whole universe to find any sort of fault with her; " only I suspect this Mr. John is rather a stern, formidable individual, because Percival never would tell me much about him, and I have sometimes thought they did not get on Avell together, which must have been John's fault, of course. Still, I am enchanted at the idea of knoAving him and his beautiful young wife also. Won't it be fun, Bab ?" " It will be very nice, I have no doubt for you, Kate," responded Barbara, trying hard to look as pleased and interested as her sister ex pected her to be. " I don't suppose I shall see very much of them — I never do of any visitors, you know.

If I had been a genius like you, now, I daresay mamma would haA-e been proud of me, and have let me come down oftener AAThen there is company. Long before you were my age, Katherine, you used to be in the drawing-room on all occasions." " Oh, that was only because of my music," said Miss Leigh, wTith jDraiseworthy humility ; " for as to my being a genius as you persist in calling me, it is all nonsense. Mamma has overrated my abilities from the moment I could crawl on all fours about the carpet, and believes to this hour that such a baby, child, and young Avoman as her first-born never did and neA^er could exist elsewhere. I am not so vain and silly, Bab, as to Aralue myself at her estimate, although I acknowledge to the hope of being able to pass muster with John NeAril and the Lady Rosamond."

Poor Barbara took it quite as a matter of course that her grievances, hoAArever promi nently they might be brought into notice, should shrink back again into their native ob scurity as soon as Katherine could make them into a stepping-stone to reach the pleasanter domain of her own individual hopes and fears and interests. Miss Lamb, who had naturally listened to the dialogue between the sisters, filled up the silence that succeeded Katherine's last observa tions by asking the maiden surname of the Lady Rosamond whom they had been speaking of. " Oh, don't you know ?" said Kate, graciously, for it was a subject which she evidently liked discussing ; " I thought everybody must have read the announcement in all the fashionable journals, of the marriage between John Wilfrid Nevil, eldest son of Mr. Nevil, of Eagles Nest, Cumberland, and the Lady Rosamond Wyndham, only daughter of the Earl of Bracklyn, county Wexford, Ireland.

It was quite a romantic affair I believe. They met on the Alps last summer, and John Nevil had the honour of saving her ladyship from some real or imaginary danger, which won her heart, and resulted in his laying his hand and fine fortune at her aristocratic feet. You look in terested, Miss Lamb. Do you happen to know anything concerning this noble young gentle- Avoman ?" It was not a nice way of putting the ques tion, and poor Miss Lamb, in spite of her quarter of a century's experience, Avas some what foolishly sensitive still. Perhaps the sting inflicted by Miss Leigh's haughty words may have been rankling in the governess's tender flesh, and infusing into her spirit a bitterness she Avas not conscious of, as, with a sudden hectic on either pale cheek, she hur riedly replied — " A friend of mine was engaged as governess at Bracklyn Castle when Lady Rosamond was about fifteen.

They had then had thirteen instructresses in succession, and none of them could remain aboATe three months at the out side. My friend stayed nearly six, but came away very much broken in health and spirits. The old earl had recently lost his wife, and was passionate and irritable in the extreme ; but it was the Lady Rosamond herself who tried her teachers past endurance. She may be altered now — for Mr. Nevil's sake I hope she is ; but at that time, while universal report allowed her to be one of the most lovely girls in Ireland, it also condemned her as the most fretful, exacting, overbearing young person whom any parent, or governess, or dependent had ever had to deal with. You asked what I knew of the Lady Rosamond, Miss Leigh, and I have answered you truly and candidly." "And I don't believe a syllable of it," said Katherine, rising and walking to the school room glass to adjust a white camellia she had placed amongst the thick masses of her raven VOL. I. hair.

" You gOA*ernesses, Miss Lamb, begging your pardon, are so fond of a little bit of scandal, especially if it relates to the upper ten thousand. Bab, my dear, I am going now, and if you are a good child I will manage that you shall see something of John Nevil and his Avife while they are here." But cheering as this condescending promise Avas, Barbara thought much less of it during the evening than of how she might make up to poor Miss Lamb for the cruel stabs her sister Katherine had thoughtlessly given her. John Nevil and Lady Rosamond Avere of minor interest to this little school-girl at present, than the kind and forbearing, if not always sunny-tempered governess, in whose society the greater part of her young life had hitherto been passed.

Chapter II. The

LE1GHS AND THE NEVILS. The Leighs of Leigh Court, Warwickshire, Avere one of the oldest families in the county, and though there was no record of any of them having been especially famous or enor mously rich, still for many generations they had been in affluent circumstances, lived liberally yet Avithin their means, and borne altogether an unblemished reputation, not only amongst people of their own rank and standing in society, but amongst their country neighbours generally, including the village poor and the tenants on their tolerably extensive estate. The present Mr. Leigh Avas a very fair specimen of a well born and moderately well educated country gentleman. He greatly pre ferred Leigh Court to his town residence, dis charged faithfully his duties as landlord aud o o county magistrate, Avas fond of field sports and his bottle of old port after a day's hard run, superintended the cultivation of his own farms, and, in short, made the best of life in quite an inoffensive manner as regarded others, if not in a very elevating one as touching himself.

He Avas a kind husband — some said even a little henpecked, but that no doubt was scandal — a tolerably indulgent father, especially to his girls, and a not particularly overbearing master, though he had his tempers of course, and could swear " like a good 'un," the servants were Avont to say, when he was very much put out. Mrs. Leigh, a lady Avho had descended in a direct line from the great earl of Warwick, Avas less generally popular than her husband. She had strong prejudices, without a corre sponding strength of mind, was excessively im perious in her manners, hasty and sometimes violent in temper, and actively kind and affectionate to none save her own family, amongst whom her eldest daughter, Katherine, was the decided and openly avowed favourite. Mrs. Leigh did not boast of many intimate friends, for of human nature in general she had but a poor opinion, but to rank as rank she paid Avilling and gracious homage, desiring nothing so much as that her children should connect themselves with the aristocracy of the land.

The only son of Mr. and Mrs. Leigh, and the future representative of the Leigh dignities, A\ras at present completing his university education. He was eighteen months older than Katherine, and neither worse nor better, as far as could be seen on the surface, than nine tenths of the )'oung men with whom he asso ciated. Cyril Leigh was both fond and proud of his sisters, who, in return, made a kind of household pet of him, Barbara especially cherishing the idea that he had the elements of a very great and noble nature hidden under the outer crust of a lightness and frivolity of manner and speech, which it was already becoming the fashion for young men on all occasions to assume. Katherine and Barbara having been introduced in the first chapter will be left to develop themselves as the story progresses — only a few words of explanation on the subject of the former's matrimonial engagement may be ad visable here.

The Nevils could not boast an ancient pedigree, nor were they allied to any of the noble English families so highly appreciated by Mrs. Leigh— but they had the advantage of being immensely rich, and of owning more landed property than any single aristocrat in the country. Eagle's Nest in Cumberland was the favourite residence of old Mr. Nevil, but they had a smaller place in Warwickshire, situated about eight or nine miles from Leigh Court. This was called " The Pines," and to it, on account of the failing health of Mrs. NeA'il, the whole family, Avith the exception of the eldest son, Avho was rarely at home, had somewhat recently removed. Katherine Leigh was introduced to Percival Nevil at the house of a mutual friend, and We at first sight on both sides was the result of the meeting. After a very few visits to Leigh Court, Avhere he Avas received with a due amount of caution by the parents of the young lady — for if truth must be told, the stately Katherine had given no small trouble and anxiety to the authors of her being, apropos of her love affairs, since she was about thirteen — Mr. Percival Nevil boldly asked her hand Avith every appearance of anticipating confidently a favourable reply.

This, however, he was very THE LEIGHS AND THE NE\TILS. 23 far from obtaining in the first instance. Mr. Leigh did not AATant to part Avith his charming daughter at all, and he Avas sick of hearing that Kate was in love. Couldn't the silly girl take better care of her heart than expose it to be pecked at by eArery Avhiskered, sentimental fellow that came across her way ? He firml}' belieAred it was the silly romantic name of this harebrained young Nevil that had caught her fancy. There Avas nothing in the man that he could see, and as for money, Kate Avould have enough of her own, and need not throw herself into anybody's arms for that. All this to his wife, Avho listened with com pressed brows and drawn-in mouth, simply replying, when he had quite done, that Mr. Percival Nevil was not a husband she should have chosen for her daughter, inasmuch as he had no trace of blue blood in him — but as poor dear Kate was in loAre in downright earnest this time, and had made up her mind to adhere to her choice, she, the mother, really could not see that there Avas any help for it.

Besides, as he would be sure to have The Pines one of these days, it would be so nice for dearest Kate to be living near her old home : and although the Nevils Avere in no way related to the THE LEIGHS AND THE NEVIL5*. aristocracy, Mrs. Leigh was informed on the best authority that they were soon to be allied to a distinguished branch of it through the marriage of the eldest son Avith a daughter of the Earl of Bracklyn. Altogether, Mrs. Leigh opined that it Avould not do to give the young man a decided rejection. He might be kept at bay a little, to enhance the value of the gift he had rather too boldly asked for ; but in the end Kate must be made happy, and no doubt everything Avould turn out for the best. " Egad, Elizabeth, you have done and are doing your utmost to spoil that girl," said the father, Avith some natural tender.