One Golden Summer

Chapter I. Sir Charles Is Excited

TT was not only that I had never seen my -*- father in a bad temper, but that, in truth, I had never seen, during the whole course of my life, any man openly angry in my presence, and that, consequently, I knew no more by experience of masculine violence or irritability than an infant knows of them who comes smiling, in innocent unconscious ness of sin and evil, into a sin-stained world. Sir Charles was standing, when I opened the library door, with his back to me, and his face to the fire. I was aware that he VOL. III. B must be smoking by the strong odour of a cigar that filled the room, and I saw imme diately that on the table close behind him was a tray with brandy and water and a tumbler that appeared to have been recently drained. The slight noise made by the opening door caused him to turn sharply round, re vealing to me a countenance on every line of which a child might have read irritation and temper that had got beyond the un fortunate man's own control.

He put down his cigar on seeing me, but I think this was rather an instinct of courtesy than a pre meditated or even conscious act, for the next thing he did was to stare at me vacantly, as though he had quite forgotten why I was invading his bachelor domain, and was looking to me for an explanation. I knew then that he must have taken a large dose of that poison on the table since his interview with Lady Emlyn, and my heart began to beat with a fear and an emotion that no amount of mere temper, unaccompanied by inebriation in my poor father, would have inspired. " You sent for me, papa," I said hesi tatingly, and advancing a very few steps into the room. " Lampton told me you wanted to speak to me here." " Well, so I did," he replied, with a fretful sharpness that was suggestive of more to follow, and as though the very sound of a human voice roused the demon within him.

" Come over here, can't you. I am not a Hercules that I can bawl to people a mile away from me. I am a worn-out miserable wreck of a man, whom everybody conspires to plague and madden, as if I wasn't going to the grave fast enough to please them. Look here, girl, you are my only daughter, the only child indeed I ever had, and it's hard if I can't get obedience and duty out of you. Egad ! I mean getting them, I can tell you, or I'll know the reason why. Didn't that b2 canting old hypocrite down in the country teach you that you must honour your parents, and obey them in everything? She ought to be hung if she didn't, and so I'll let her know if you begin by thwarting and defying me. Now what have you got to say, Rosamund Fairfax? Don't sit there like a mute at a funeral, twisting your silly useless fingers together, and looking dazed.

You've plenty of wit, young lady, and you know Lady Emlyn has been here, and you must remember what you told her yesterday ; more fool you, for your idiotic prating. Hang it all !" he concluded, with an increasingly flushed face, and giving the table a blow that made the very floor tremble under us ; "am I to be twitted by that painted Jezebel for having no authority over my own daughter, a girl I've brought from the depths of obscurity and raised to one of the finest positions in England ? I won't bear it, I say — I won't bear it. Why, in the name of patience, girl, don't you speak ?" "You have given me no chance hitherto, papa," I said, hiding as well as I could the sick terror I was really feeling, and endea vouring to keep my poor nervous fingers quiet. " I can only say that I told Lady Emlyn yesterday what I meant at the earliest opportunity to confide to you — namely, that I was engaged to Hugh Shirley, Miss Claxton's cousin and heir.

It was, however, the engagement only I mentioned to Lady Emlyn, and that because she talked of finding me a rich and titled husband in the society you have asked her to introduce me to. I said I would not be put up to auction, and I meant it. I have no wish to defy or thwart you. If you object to Hugh, and forbid my marrying him, I am not obliged to marry at all. This alternative would not break my heart ; but every right and modest and womanly feeling would be outraged were I to become a willing party to Lady Emlyn's manœuvr ings and intrigues. You told me yourself that she has already the reputation of having angled for husbands for all her own daughters. Would it be consistent with your dignity, to say nothing of mine, that she should begin angling again for me ?" " I never asked her to angle for you," he blustered, filling himself another tumbler of brandy and water.

"You are handsome enough, and, by Jove ! sharp witted enough, to go off without that, and to take your pick too. Am I to understand " (this with a sudden transition from peevish irascibility to crushing sarcasm) " that the gentleman you have honoured with your regard is the interesting boy sweetheart and naval hero you spoke about to me the other day ?" "Hugh Shirley is in the merchant service," I said, with some attempt at outward bold ness. "I never told you he was in the Navy ; but he is a perfect gentleman, and will have a large fortune by-and-by. We have been companions nearly all our lives, and everybody thought our engagement a most natural and suitable thing. I was not a baronet's daughter when it was entered into, you must remember." Whether my father took this as an indica tion of some little leaning on my part to wards his views, or was getting too hazy to care about going on with the battle, or thought I might, in the end, prove a match for him as an adversary, I am quite unable to determine.

Anyhow, he abruptly sank into a chair at the table, leant his head upon his clasped hands, and sighed stormily. " It's all too much for my poor brain !" he half wailed, as I looked at him anxiously, "and every scene of excitement and agitation I have thrust upon me takes a good year out of my life, battered and ruined as that is to begin with. Look here, Rosa mund, you are a monstrous clever, sensible girl, and, I am willing to believe, a feeling one. Give up this tomfoolery you've been acknowledging, and which you must see now would be sheer madness to persist in. A baronet's daughter mated with a merchant sailor ! Why, the whole world would cry shame on me, and my Lady Emlyn would shake her painted cheeks and laugh me to scorn. Give it up, my girl, and take your chance of winning a prize in the great lottery.

I promise you there shall be no angling, no intriguing of any sort. By Jove! you've only to be seen, Rosamund, to be run after on all sides, and it's the one solitary interest I shall ever again have the chance of getting, for I'm a miserable, world wearied, used-up old fellow, my girl, and that's the solemn truth. You'd pity me if you could feel for one minute the merci less smashing and hammering that is going on in my wretched head, and which is bound to drive me stark, staring mad one of these days. Now kiss me, if I haven't scared you, Rosamund, and tell me you'll be a good girl and a reasonable. There's no saying what you may make of your poor old father yet if only you'll be kind and patient with him, and not set yourself against him in the thing nearest his heart." What could I say, what could I do, thus piteously appealed to by a father whose very sins, leading him as they were to the blackest gulf of misery and ruin, made me feel com passionately towards him, even while they strongly revolted and tortured me?

My heart was literally sick within me, as I bent down and imprinted on his scorching forehead the kiss he had asked for, and said in a low, tired voice, "Let us end our discussion and sign a truce of peace for to-day at least, papa. You had better lie down and try to get some sleep. Indeed" (as another heavy sigh smote upon my ear, and he tightened his grasp of the cool hand I had put in his hot one) — " indeed I wish to be a comfort and a blessing to you, and I will not set my will in opposition to yours, if by-and-by, when you come to understand the case we have been speaking of better, you think as you do now about it." " Good child ! good child !" he exclaimed, with a momentary brightening, and be coming rather more lavish of his embraces than, under the circumstances, was at all agreeable.

" I knew you were a woman in a thousand, and not one to throw yourself away upon any poor devil who took advan tage of your youth and inexperience to bind you. I told my lady I should have a titled son-in-law yet ; I scorned alike her twittings and her croakings. She's a charming woman, my dear, you know — a charming, clever woman is my old friend Lady Emlyn ; but there's a mocking demon in her at times, and he was inclined to be rampant this morning. You are off now then, Rosamund, and we are the best of friends, remember. I shall take your advice and get a bit of a snooze that I may be bright and dehonnair to join you at dinner-time." A promise, however, that was not ful filled, as Sir Charles grew worse as the day advanced, and was really ill and obliged to send for a doctor before the evening.

I had spent a miserable afternoon alone in the great drawing-room, with my own anxious and disquieting thoughts to add to the dreariness of everything around me. I was not satisfied, by any means, with the result of my interview with my father. In vain I tried to persuade myself that the concession I had made was only a very little one, and made almost on compulsion. In vain I argued that Sir Charles would not even re member, in his soberer moments, the words I had impulsively uttered, much less hold me to them when he came to learn the whole circumstances of the case. In reply to all, conscience loudly accused me of having, in the face of my most solemn re solutions, of my promise to Jane, of that sentence in my dear granny's letter which had so touched me when I read it, con cerning the large amount of others' happiness for which I was responsible — of having, in the face of all this, weakly and impru dently yielded to the adversary a piece of vantage ground I might never succeed in recovering.

And then I forced myself to put somebody else in poor Hugh's place, and to ask my heart how it would have been had constancy to that somebody been in question, with any amount of parental authority, parental violence or even parental threatenings, arrayed on the other side. I will not say just now what answer my heart was constrained to give. I will only confess that I was at war with myself all those long miserable solitary hours, during which the Winter twilight crept gloomily into the room, and the tall and staring gilt clock on the mantelpiece ticked its loud monotone in my ears, and the fire burned duller and duller, because I would not ring to have it replenished, and at last I was shivering outwardly as well as moaning inwardly, and feeling that it would be a smaller matter to give up all my present cold grandeur and future prospects, if by so doing I could find myself once more in the little cosy parlour at Thorncliff, nestling contentedly in my old fashion at my darling granny's knees, and with her loving kisses on my cheek and lips.

But, alas ! this vision faded almost instantly, to give place to the reality of my new Swiss maid standing modestly at the door and telling me it was nearly seven o'clock, and would I be pleased to come to my room and dress for dinner. Mrs. Jackson met me as I went out after a hurried toilette — such a farce it seemed to me to be dressed as for company just to sit for a couple of hours or so opposite to my poor doomed father ! — and announced in a very indifferent voice that Sir Charles was too ill to come down to dinner, and that, in fact, he was in bed, and a physician with him. " 111, and in bed !" I said, indignantly ; u then why was I not told before? Why have I been allowed to dress ? I will go to my father at once, Mrs. Jackson. I do not want any dinner. You can send me a cup of tea into Sir Charles's room by-and by-" Mrs. Jackson smiled in her half sarcastic, half pitying way.

"There is nothing that you can do in the sick room, I assure you, miss," she said, with quiet decision; "and, moreover, Sir Charles would be displeased if you attempt ed to go to him. These attacks are to be expected from time to time, but they are not dangerous — as yet ; and he will be better in a day or two." Something in her voice warned me not to ask more particulars just then, with my new maid standing behind me, and of course (for she spoke and understood English perfectly) listening eagerly to every word. " Well, in any case I am not obliged to dine in state by myself, Mrs. Jackson !" I remarked, half turning back into my room to divest myself of some of my superfluous finery. " You can tell the cook to stop the dinner, and to let me have some tea up here in stead." "Only Sir Charles wishes the dinner to be served as usual and you to sit down to it, miss," replied the housekeeper, who, I have no doubt, thought me excessively childish, and utterly wanting in all the attributes of a fine lady ; "and as he is still very irritable and excited, I think, miss, if I might venture to advise, it would be well that you should carry out his wishes."

So, ridiculously absurd as the whole thing appeared to me, and intensely ludicrous as I felt I was looking, sitting all alone with two men servants in waiting at a sumptuously spread table, I went through the ordeal with a dumb patience for which I gave myself some credit, especially as I had reason to suspect that my friend the butler and the stately Lampton were amusing themselves secretly at my expense. Mrs. Jackson came to me when I went into the drawing-room, and announced that my father was asleep, and apparently quite comfortable. She had been with him herself since the doctor's visit, and the medicine he had taken was subduing the fever, and quiet ing him down altogether. " And you must make your mind as easy as you can, miss," added this very intelligent and experienced housekeeper; " for, as I told you upstairs, these attacks are bound to come on every now and then.

I have known from the day I first entered Sir Charles's service that one wasn't far off. I have unhappily been employed by other gentlemen — ay, and ladies too, more's the pity and the shame ! — who have been slaves to strong drink, and I am familiar with all the tricks it plays them. Sir Charles will probably go on steadily for a few weeks when he is up and about again — they mostly do after a shake like this — but bless you, miss, he's fast in the grip of the enemy, is your poor papa, and nothing short of a miracle can ever release him now. My heart aches for you when I think of your life with him, miss, and you so young, and nobody of your own kith and kin to share your trouble. But you ought to have a lady companion to live with you — you'll never bear it else. Excuse me for my free dom, miss, but why don't you ask Sir Charles in the beginning to let you have a lady with you always?

He'd be agree able, perhaps, if you mentioned it at once." "Thank you for the suggestion, my good Mrs. Jackson," I said with a sinking heart, and some bitter shame glowing in my cheeks, " but I do not wish it. How can I wish for more spectators of this misery and disgrace ? I hope very earnestly that you vol. ra. c will stay with me. I should feel wretchedly helpless and hopeless without your assistance and experience ; but do not even speak of more strangers in the household. Any solitude, any dulness will be preferable to that." " Then if you think so, miss, I am more than content," said the woman with real kindness in her voice, " and I will stay with you, come what may, as long as you need me. Sir Charles's tempers will become more and more trying, but somebody must bear them, and I have never been much used to smooth paths.

It's for you I feel far more than for myself." Mrs. Jackson's sympathy not being of a nature to raise my spirits or brighten my hopes of the future, I made an excuse for getting rid of her companionship soon, and retiring to my own room I began an an swer to my dear granny's letter, in which I commented largely on all she had written about, and avoided, with admirable ingenu ity, saying a single word that could alarm or pain that anxious, loving soul on the subject of her lost Rosie. c2

Chapter II. Sir Charles Is Depressed

FOR more than half a week my father was confined to his room, and I was never once invited to visit him. Mrs. Jack son assured me he was going on well, and consoled me for not seeing him by adding that his spirits were " that low, and that weak," that it would be only pain and distress to me to witness them. She ad vised me to have the brougham and to take a drive every day, which I did in sheer des peration, not having a human creature except herself to exchange a word with, the weather continuing gloomy and miserable in the extreme, and those state dinners every day oppressing me beyond telling. One morning there came a little break in this dread monotony in the shape of a tiny scented note from Lady Emlyn, containing the following information — " My dear Miss Fairfax, "lam rejoiced to tell you that I have succeeded in obtaining a card for the Countess of Berwick's very select reception of next Thursday week.

The Countess never leaves town in the Winter ; she is an eccentric, and of course from her rank can do whatever she likes. Her little parties are delicious, and it is a very great thing to get admitted to them. I shall be delighted to take you with me, my love, as I am sure your dear papa will agree with me that you could not make your first appearance at a more desirable house. Remember, that your dress is to be the white silk we bought the other day, and you are to wear a single rose (real of course) in your hair. I antici pate a great success for you. Even when London is nominally empty, this charming Countess can always manage to conjure up a good sprinkling of dukes and marquises and honourables for her entirely recherche gatherings. If we do not meet before, which may possibly be the case, as I am not very well and must husband my forces for the grand occasion, expect me about a quarter to ten on Thursday week.

" With love and compliments to your sweet self and your dear papa, " Yours ever, " Florinda Emlyn. "P.S. — Be good enough to tell my friend, Sir Charles, who will, I know, be interested in the news, that my beloved widowed daughter, Mrs. Nevil, has sailed for Europe, and may be expected in about a month from this date." I should be wholly insincere if I did not confess that Lady Emlyn's note gave me some little pleasure, in the utter dearth of all variety and interest to which my life in London had hitherto condemned me. It was, at least, a glimmer of passing sunshine in the future to look forward to, a break in the clouds that were hanging so heavily over my poor head, and in the really oppressive atmosphere of which I was ceasing even to breathe freely. I wrote a line of thanks and pleased acquiescence to Lady Emlyn at once, and then I sent her note to my father, with a pencilled word or two of my own, telling him I had accepted, and that I hoped he would approve of my having done so.

That evening he came down to dinner, looking a miserable wreck of even his miserable self, but quite free from irritability or excitement, very gentle and • amiable to me, but in the utmost depths of that depres sion which is only, in its precise measure and kind, experienced by habitual drinkers in their few lucid intervals. When I inquired, with great caution, about his illness, he shook his head, and heaved a sigh that must have had its birth in some region of feeling rarely stirred in the nature of such weak, and worldly, and self-indulgent men. " I have been to the Inferno, painted by Dante, my girl !" he moaned, as he sank into the easy-chair I had drawn close to the fire for him. " Heaven forbid you should ever know anything of its ghastly horrors, or of the fiends that swarm there to torture such unhappy wretches as myself at their will.

But we won't speak about it to-night, Rosamund, since I am safe on this side of the river Styx for a little while, and have got you, my pretty, good child, to comfort me, and help to drive the black demons away. I shall go to the park with you to morrow, and I want to get you a few jewels and other trifles. You must make your debut as becomes Sir Charles Fairfax's only daughter, as well as the very loveliest young woman in England. Lady Emlyn was right. You must marry a man of rank, my love. I verily believe, Rosamund, it is this hope which alone keeps me alive. My whole heart, or all, at least, that is left to me of that battered article, is set upon it, and you are too good a child to disappoint me." Of course I said nothing. My father was certainly not in a state to be contradicted or argued with just now.

I was glad to have him with me in a perfectly sane and composed condition. He could be an agreeable companion enough still when his faculties were not chained and gagged by the tyrant to whom he had sold himself. After a little food — he always ate like a sparrow — and a very moderate allowance of his favourite burgundy, Sir Charles rallied to some extent, and tried to be entertaining. It was certainly a signal failure as far as I was concerned, because whatever anecdotes he told, whatever reminiscences of his past life he invoked on my behalf, I could not listen intelligently for the utterly mournful fascinated attention he himself, with his white, drawn, suffering face, excited. Independently of his marred complexion, bent figure, and extreme ema ciation, there was an expression of such in describable sadness and hoplessness in my father's countenance, when perfectly sober, that to look on it without emotion was quite impossible.

I always fancied he must be brooding over his lost life, and comparing his present desolate, suffering, unsatisfied age, with what it might have been, now that wealth and influence had come to him, had his past been one of honour and respecta bility. It was gradually dawning upon my mind — inexperienced as I was — that even the acquisition of an ancient baronetcy and a sine fortune could not all at once restore to a man, who had been sinking year by year in the social scale, the privileges he had for feited. I saw that Sir Charles Fairfax had few visitors, except those very questionable individuals who came to drink and gamble with him, and Lady Emlyn, who, by his own showing, had hitherto occupied a place rather on the outskirts of the fashionable world than within its golden gates, and who doubtless had her own ends to gain in offer ing to chaperon the daughter of a newly made baronet of unfortunate antecedents.

These reflections and intuitions that forced themselves upon me, as the days went on, were very far from agreeable or cheering. All the pride and sensitiveness of my nature rebelled against them, and I often wished I could persuade my poor father to leave London, to abandon the idea of forcing me into society, and to let me devote myself as long as he lived, in some quiet country place, or on the Continent if he preferred it, to the task of ministering to his comforts, of nursing him in his sickness, and of doing my very utmost to win him from the clutches of that cruel enemy to whom he had delivered himself, soul and body, so many years ago. During the short time that the panic induced by his recent illness lasted, and com pelled him to moderation and care, I did, on one or two occasions, hint at the above plan, urging that, as I had not yet tasted the pleasures and excitements of society, I should experience no real loss in foregoing them, and that I knew my life, in the end, would be far happier devoted to him, than spent in a round of idle gaieties that my conscience would be for ever protesting against and condemning.

To all of which my father would reply, with the inevitable dreary moan, " It's too late, my dear, too late, as far as I am concerned, to think of retirement and quiet, happy days. I made my bed in the years that are gone for ever, and as I made it so I must lie and groan upon it now. Besides, Rosamund " — this was the invariable finale — " you forget that I have to see you married suitably before I give up the ghost. If your conscience appeals against pleasure, on your account, then silence it by the reminder that you are doing my will in taking your place in the gay world, and that the object is a worthier one than that of merely killing time. Be a good girl for a few months, and after that we will go together to the lakes or the moors, and recruit our strength. I promise you we'll have a glorious Summer of rest and quiet in some charming nook or other, where you shall nurse and fuss over your poor old father to your heart's content."

This, my dear reader must remember, was in the comparatively palmy days of my father's slow recovery from his illness, when he was always kind and good-tempered to me, however depressed in spirits, and when we went out for a daily drive in Sir Charles's new carriage together, and spent our even ings in harmony, at least, and sometimes in tolerably pleasant chit-chat. I did not, for a moment, delude myself into a belief that such an improved state of things would last. Mrs. Jackson's experience was too constant ly supplying the deficiences of mine to make this possible, but I was grateful for it while I stayed, notwithstanding, and I endeavoured to improve the fleeting hour by winning as much confidence and esteem as I could from my unhappy father while he was in a con dition to bestow these sentiments upon any one.

In the midst of the exceptionally peace ful time above referred to came the Countess of Berwick's select reunion, and my first ex perience of the delights of a really fashion able entertainment.

Chapter III. My First View Of Society

"II f~Y father had been suffering very much -^"-*- from his head during all the morning of the important day, but he insisted on coming down to dinner, and to see me dressed for my party. This dressing was of course a very interesting affair to myself and my zealous maid, who really entered heart and soul into the business, and would have thought the sudden declaration of an European war infinitely less disastrous than the going wrong of the merest trifle in con nection with my carefully studied toilette. Frankly speaking, I believe it was a great success, and that I looked not altogether amiss in the soft flowing white silk, fitting to perfection, and the exquisite set of pearl ornaments which had been amongst my father's lavish gifts on the day we first went out together after his illness.