Lady Lovan. A novel

Front matter

LADY LOVAN T ady Lovan A NOVEL BY Agnes Farrell ft "It is at eve that the mills of the gods do grind the grist in powder." XonOon 1895 HUTCHINSON & CO. 34 PATERNOSTER ROW PRINTED AT N1MEGUEN (HOLLAND) BV H. C. A. THIEME OF NIMEOUEN (HOLLAND) AND TALBOT HOUSE, ARUNDEL STREET, LONDON, W.C. CONTENTS i A DAUGHTER OF LONDON. CHAPTER PAGE I. POOR UNCLE RICHARD I II. EVELYN BURNIE 1 3 UT. OUTDOOR ARISTOCRATS 25 IV. PUT A GIRL ON A HORSE, AND SHE'LL RIDE TO . . 37 V. THE GENUS SCHOOLMASTER (FIRST STAGE) 52 VI. A DINNER-PARTY IN THE PROVINCES 63 VII. RASTLOSE LIEBE 84 II. SOCIETY. I. THE BAPTISM OF PLEASURE 95 II. WHAT HAD PRECEDED I 10 III. EVELYN'S HUSBAND 1 24 IV. CONJUGAL EXPERIENCE IN "HIGH LIFE" 1 39 V. THE SAME, CONTINUED 152 VI. THE ASSASSINATION OF SOULS 1 CONTENTS III. THE WAHLVERWANDTSCIIAFTEN.

CHAPTER PAGE I. AN ENGLISH PEASANT GIRL AND HER AFFECTIONS . . 1 84 II. THE GENUS SCHOOLMASTER (SECOND STAGE) 200 III. DEBATEABLE LAND 2l8 TV. LYR1SCHES INTERMEZZO 23 1 V. QUOD ERAT DEMONSTRANDUM 250 IV. STORM AND CALM. I. ENTRE CHIEN ET LOUP 265 II. THE GENUS SCHOOLMASTER (THIRD S 1'AGe) 28 1 III. DOG does EAT DOG 300 IV. THE SAME, CONTINUED (CONJUGAL PHASE) 3 1 6 V. CROSS PURPOSES 329 VI. ON THE THRESHOLD

Chapter I. Poor Uncle Richard

"I see no other way out of it," said Mrs. Bain. Mr. Bain, with his big head stooped down over his coffee cup, from which he was drinking, made an inarticulate but affirmative reply, while Lilian sat upright reading the letter with a pretty curiosity. "And who is this Mrs. S. W. Barff, mamma?" she asked, putting the letter down on to her side plate. "I have no idea, my love," replied Mrs. Bain, " I never heard of her before, but she seems from her letter to be nice enough. How such a person — a clergyman's wife, I mean — came to know your Uncle Richard so well, with his views, I am sure is very puzzling." "Perhaps," said Lilian, "Cousin Evelyn doesn't have Uncle Richard's views." I Mrs. Bain shook her head and looked across the breakfast-table at her husband. "That would be very unlikely, I am afraid," she said.

"Well, George," she added, "I suppose I ought to write to her and tell her that we shall be glad to have Evelyn, at any rate for a time? It is clearly what we ought to do. The girl is utterly alone, and with such a training as she must have had, and being independent with the little annuity she will have from her father, there is no saying what she might do with herself." Mr. Bain was now opening his Times with his chair half turned from the table, and his wife knew that when he had begun to read there would be nothing more to be got out of him. "Just so, my dear," he said, "do exactly as you please. I've no objection to your niece coming to stop with us. None in the least." No more was said on the subject, and pre sently Mrs. Bain and Lilian rose and went upstairs into the morning-room, or the boudoir as they called it indifferently.

The sunlight was pouring in through the arched stone windows, and Bully, the slim and lonely little canary, was singing loudly. " Tell me about Uncle Richard, mamma, " said Lilian, with a face more thoughtful than usual, standing and looking out over the garden and trees to the semi-circle of bright and purple shadowed sea. " Bully, be quiet ! " Mrs. Bain sank into the easy chair by the fireplace and took up a piece of her wool work from the small round work-table beside it. The canary bird had obediently done as he was bid. "Your Uncle Richard?" she said, heaving a sigh. "It's a painful subject, Lily, and I've always avoided it, but I will tell you now. You ought to know, if your cousin Evelyn is coming to stay with us." Lilian sat down in the window-seat and turned her face to her mother.

The sunlight made all the thick brown hair that fell round it shine like intense gold threads. Mrs. Bain, looking at her for a moment, felt how exqui sitely and delicately lovely her child was, and how complete a harmony there was in the beautiful soul that informed this beautiful body. A sort of presentiment of danger came upon her. Might not the introduction into this peace ful and happy household of this ill-omened stranger lead to bad results? Her lips pressed together. One thing was certain. Her duty, her clearly conceived sense of her duty, towards the fatherless and motherless child of her only brother was leading her to take this step. So soon, however, as it should be obvious that that duty clashed with the nearer and greater one she owed to her own child, she would know how to act.

On the other hand she had moulded and trained Lilian up to the point of having complete confidence in her, and, after all, her niece was a lady, and would doubtless recognize what would be dishonourable, not to say unpardonably ungrateful, in such a case as this was. "Well, mamma?" said Lilian, "tell me. I'm listening. I want to know all about it. Just as it happened. What made Uncle Richard an infidel?" She broke off Bully's attempt at a new outburst of song by a gesture. Mrs. Bain's brow had cleared, but the last harsh word clouded it a little. "Your Uncle Richard," she said, "was the pride of us all. We would all have done anything to give him the opportunity of distin guishing himself. Your grandfather and grandmother made many sacrifices to send him to Rugby and Cambridge. After the death ot Lionel and Edward, my two elder brothers, when they were quite young, your grandparents completely wrapped themselves up in him.

We all more or less lived for him. He carried everything before him at school and at the University — all the prizes and medals and silver cups for running and jumping, and, though we were a little disappointed when we found he had made up his mind to become a schoolmaster, yet we never said a word against it, and I am sure that my mother and myself were perfectly happy in the idea that he would go into the Church. It had been my mother's dream, but she had never divulged it, or tried to influence him in any way, because she knew your grandfather would sooner he had gone into the Army or to the Bar." She paused a moment. Lilian was watching and listening to her with considerable interest. Her curiosity was aroused concerning this mysterious and wicked uncle of hers. "Well," proceeded Mrs. Bain, "he got a good appointment right away at Glastonbury, as second classical master, and not long after wards he took his M.A. at the University and was ordained deacon.

Then suddenly it all came upon us like a thunderclap. He wrote a long letter to your grandfather from Glaston bury. He said he had made up his mind not to enter the Church and that he was a con firmed free-thinker. I shall never forget it! Your grandmother and I read the letter together up in her bedroom. It broke her heart. She was never the same again." Tears were in Mrs. Bain's eyes, and her lips quivered. Lilian rose and came and sat at her feet, taking her hand and caressing it. "That wasn't all," proceeded Mrs. Bain, "it wasn't even the worst. He had made up his mind, too, to give up his place at Glastonbury. He said he could not consent to keep it, heaven knows why, for it was at least a living for him. We talked it all over, your grandfather and mother and I; though I was only a girl of sixteen then — younger than even you, my love, but I was always my dear mother's companion, just as you, my love, are mine." — (They pressed one another's hands gently.) — "And we decided for your grandfather to go to Glastonbury and see the poor, deluded boy himself.

Shall I ever forget our four days' waiting and his return? He could not tell us all the terrible news at once. He broke it to us bit by bit." Mrs. Bain sat looking in front of her, a hard, set expression on her face. " It was a girl, " she said, " a wretched, wicked girl who was at the bottom of it all. She had led poor Richard away. He was always easily led — in some things. This girl must have been mad, I think. It was she who persuaded him to give up the Church, and to leave Glastonbury, and now they were going up to London together, and how they were going to five, heaven only knows. And even this wasn't the worst. My dear, there are some things that seem too dreadful to be believed, and which no true and pure-minded woman ought to have to know of, but at some time or other we have all to meet and face such things, and I would rather that your own mother told you of them than that you should light upon them by chance, as you always might, and they should shock and trouble you more than need be."

She paused again, Lilian eagerly attentive, Bully chirping spiritedly. "It will show you," she said, "to what free thinking and infidelity and "all these horrible things lead. This wretched girl had persuaded Richard that they ought not to believe in to believe in marriage. It is too dreadful to think of, but they had made up their minds to go up to London together without being married. When your grandmother understood this it went to her heart like a knife. She almost fell down, and we were all terrified. All that your grandfather could do was to make him promise that, if they would not be properly married in Church, they would at least go to the govern ment office and write down their names, which makes them legally married, you know, and save not only all of us, but all of that wretched girl's family, from shame and disgrace for ever.

I cannot — I cannot understand that — that woman! Either she was quite wicked and depraved, or she was mad. For she was a lady; there is no doubt she was a lady. Her mother was just as distressed about it as we were. Her father had been a doctor of position at Glas tonbury, in the town. But he had died suddenly of heart disease, and left them very poorly off. Your grandfather saw her several times; they had some most distressing interviews, and he saw this girl — Miss Chaytor, Evelyn Chaytor her name was — and he saw she seemed quite right in every other way. Your grandmother never saw her, nor did I. And this was the cruellest thing your Uncle Richard did. He would not see any of us." "That was cruel," said Lilian, "very cruel." "He wrote a short note," proceeded Mrs. Bain, "to your grandmother — gentle and affectionate it was, he was always that, but refusing to see any of us, as it could only give us all useless pain, he said, and that later on perhaps we might meet and things come right again, but not now, not yet !

But the cruel boy didn't know what he was doing. He broke your grandmother's heart. He killed her. That winter she had rheumatic fever, and he never saw her again alive. He came to the house and went into the room where she was lying dead on the bed with the flowers I put, and then he went away, for I would not go to the funeral with him or see him at all. No, my dear," exclaimed Mrs. Bain, with energy, "I couldn't do it ! I could not forgive him ! " The tears were welling from her eyes. She sat looking in front of her, with the hard, set expression on her face, while Lilian kissed and caressed her hand, saying: "Poor mamma, poor mamma!" "Well," she proceeded, "I never saw him again at all. Your grandfather did once or twice, and I wrote to him just after I married your father at the time his child — the girl — Evelyn — was born, and told him that I forgave him, but that I could not bear to see him.

He wrote back to me a kind letter, wishing me happiness, and that was all we had to do with one another for years. Then his wife died, and I thought it all over, and spoke of it with your father, and we agreed that I ought to write to him and express my sympathy in his loss, and I did so. He answered this letter too, just in the same way, and I never heard anything more about him till your father read that little paragraph in the Times which said that he was dead. Then I wrote to your cousin Evelyn, as you know, asking how she was situated, and this Mrs. Barff has answered it." There was a silence, and then Lilian said, looking up : "And were Uncle Richard and his — his wife poor, mamma ?" "I think so. When your grandmother died, we found she had left half her little annuity to him and half to me — Æ150 a year, each of us.

Your uncle was a writer ; he composed books. I never read any of them, but I read a review of one of them in the Times that pained me very much. And as they said that the book was not only an 'impious' book and advocated wicked and horrible ideas about marriage and many other things, but was 'very obscure' and 'stupid', I don't think he could have made much out of his writing." At this point Bully burst out into loud song, and Lilian rose to her feet. "And didn't he write to you when grand papa died ?" she asked, going to the cage. Mrs. Bain shook her head. "No," she said. "When will you answer Mrs. Barff's letter, mamma ?" the girl asked, turning her head. " I wouldn't do it just now. You are quite upset with telling me about it all. Don't write yet, mamma dear." "No," said Mrs. Bain, "I will write pre sentry.

" Lilian began making noises to incite Bully to another lyric. She pursed her ripe red lips up at him as he ran up and down his perch, with his wings fluttering back and emitting a shrill tweet of excitement from his stretched and ruffled throat and playfully hostile beak. Mrs. Bain lay back and looked at it all, and wondered again if any harm could come of introducing this stranger into their home. "I am sure," she said to herself, "it is a question of great difficulty, and George is not the slightest help in the world !"

Chapter II. Evelyn Burnie

It was quite a week later that Mrs. Bain received one morning at breakfast-time a reply to her letter of invitation to her niece. It was from the young lady herself. The handwriting was in firm and broad characters, but, as she noticed, with a " cultivated" look about them, and it reminded her strongly of her brother's when he was at Cambridge. It ran thus: — 17, Chester Gardens, Notting Hill, April ijth, 188 "My dear Aunt, " Let me thank you exceedingly for your kind letter, and at once assure you that you need be in no anxiety as to my present condition. I am still staying, as you will see by the address, with Mrs. Barff, who is one of our greatest friends. I am undecided what I shall do eventually, but am not in any way troubled about my future, as the income that sufficed for my father and myself is more than sufficient for me, but in all probability I shall take to some active life, as I cannot bear to be idle.

For several months, however, I shall have plenty to do in putting my father's papers in order, and there may be a book of his to see through the Press. The bulk of our things will be sold, and, as Mrs. Barff is kind enough to keep here for me those of them which I still wish to retain, I shall be very glad to accept your kind invitation and come to you for a few weeks' change. I find this place almost unbearably sad. ;'I am, my dear Aunt, :'Your affectionate niece, " Evelyn Burnie. "P.S. — Will you remember me to my uncle and my cousin?" This letter seemed to both Mrs. Bain and Lilian extraordinary, no less in style and sentiments than in the fact that neither envelope nor paper showed any signs of mourning. Mr. Bain looked through it and smiled a little. " Business-like, " he said, " quite like a man's. " "It seems to me," said Mrs. Bain, "a little callous.

I fear," she added, "that we shall find her hard. Her mother completely changed poor Dick's nature. He would never have done the things he did if it had not been for her." " She doesn't say when she is coming, remarked Lilian. "I shall have to write again," answered her mother, "and tell her to come whenever she pleases. " It was not till she was up in the boudoir, seated at her desk re-reading her niece's letter, that Mrs. Bain saw how closely that letter was modelled on her own, and then the full discretion of it struck her. But the impression of callousness that she had received from the absence of black edge on envelope or paper and from her first hasty perusal of it, still remained, and her old idea that the first Evelyn Burnie did not really love her husband, but had led him away captive for his own sweet sake, (and who used to be sweeter than Dick?), was still further supplemented by the idea that the second Evelyn Burnie did not love her father.

However, she wrote cordially, wondering a little to herself at the spell wrought upon her by the dear old family name. Her father and mother and brother who had all owned it, made up the first, most happy, portion of her life. Her marriage with Mr. Bain, a large coal-owner of their neighbourhood, had meant the ease and quiet of her father's last years. She had never repented that perilous step, perilous because it had meant a marriage out of her own caste. Mr. Bain had made her, as she would have said, a good and kind husband. When her health broke down completely as the result of an accident just before the birth of her child, and threatened her with phthisis, he had pur chased this small estate at Micklehurst in the extreme south of England, and cheerfully taken upon himself the drudgery of continual journeys thence to and from his coal mines in York shire.

Her life was that of an invalid, rendered the more trying by the ever-present memory of her old health and strength. Excepting the one fatal flaw that condemned her to this often bitter inactivity, and that had compelled her acceptance of the still more bitter fact of future childlessness, she had still the outward show of her old beauty and even physical robustness. She sat looking at the broad white envelope on which she had inscribed that maiden name of hers which called up so suddenly all the painful memories of the second half of her life, and felt a powerful impulse of tenderness towards this, its last representative, the orphan child of the brother she had so passionately loved and admired, and rejected. On the night preceding her niece's arrival, however, one of her periodical attacks of illness prostrated her.

Mr. Bain, it also happened, was away in Yorkshire, and thus it fell to Lilian to drive up to the station to meet her cousin. The girl felt a little nervous as she got into the victoria and took up the reins ; but the drive along the lovely shaded road in the fine September afternoon weather, and then up by the higher road round the foot of the downs, great and green and rolling away parallel to the sea, at once exhilarated her and removed her subdued excitement. She had ten or twelve minutes to wait at the station for the train, but when from the near end of the platform she saw it suddenly glide out from the tunnel and steam up to her, she felt her heart beating fast, and she trembled a little. She looked eagerly at the passengers alighting. There were not many of them, and the first glance she caught of a rather tall girl in brown, stepping on to the platform with a bundle of rugs and a small handbag, told her it was her cousin.

The girl paused for a moment irresolute, half turned, looking up and down the train. She was in the full flow of the mild sunlight, and Lilian had excellent eyes. This first view of her cousin made her entirely forget that brown dress which ought to have been black. Her only feeling was one of admiration. Evelyn seemed to her a veritable young goddess. Her almost olive-hued face with its faint flush of red ; her dark eyes and deep red lips ; her dark glistening hair crowning the superb yet supple head set by the large throat on the perfectly shaped shoulders — the strange freedom of her beautifully moulded body, the strange glamour that radiated about her like an emanation of physical and spiritual force — she was all of a piece, and the total impression of her took such powerful hold on Lilian's humour that even when they had met and shaken hands, and were standing together in front of the luggage-van waiting for Evelyn's box to be got out, the spell of it had not yet passed away.

Lilian did not find her tongue till they were in the victoria and driving along the road. "How fresh the sea air is," murmured the other, drawing it in with a deep breath, "it is like life." Lilian laughed. " I wonder if you'd think so up at the top of the Downs," she said, "especially when a south-wester's blowing. You can scarcely walk, but down below" — (she pointed with her whip to the town clustering along the last descent of the cliffs) — "it is almost always mild, and we have a plantation of pines along the top of the cliff to break the gales." They talked together, Lilian being the chief speaker, until the road suddenly dipped down. On the left a walled and gated enclosure with a low and picturesque old house, half hid in the abundant verdure, attracted Evelyn's attention. "Isn't it lovely?" queried Lilian.

"That is the Hammonds'— the Manor House. It is the oldest house in the Undercliff. They have lived there for hundreds of years. Mrs. Hammond is a widow, and she has three children. Jack Hammond is at school up there," (she pointed to a building behind and above them on the road by which they had passed.) " But he and Mabel are at home for the holidays just now. Charlie Hammond is grown up. He is reading for the Bar in London. He left Oxford last year. They are great friends of ours." Evelyn turned and looked at the house again. "The Hammonds," said Lilian, "own all the top of the Downs. There's a track — a sort of road — along the top to Chattery. Sometimes we go up there for a ride. Can you ride, Evelyn ?" "Only a little. I used to take lessons at a riding-school in London." They were at the bottom of the hill now and right in the Undercliff road.

Evelyn had never seen anything like it before. It was almost tropical. Huge dense trees on either side made it into an avenue, and the undergrowth all along was a crowded mass of flowering shrubs. A low wall ran down the left side past a lodge — the old lodge of the Manor House— suddenly dropping almost to the level of the road by a long narrow pond overhung with great fuchsias and hydrangeas, the haunt of the white swans. The sunlight filtered through the openings of the verdure and chequered all the road with streaks of light and shade. There was a murmur of the sea-breeze in the gently swaying tree-tops, varied with intermittent snatches of song from the birds or the fleeting call of the aerial rooks from their nests high overhead. Then they turned off to the right up a lane, reached some open gates, passed through them along a broad sanded drive, and drew up before the side of the house.

Lilian jumped down and handed the reins to the groom. "Come," she said to Evelyn, "we'll go round by the terrace and in through the drawing-room. Mamma is almost sure to be there." The two girls went side by side over the grass, through the shrubs and out on to the terrace. They found Mrs. Bain sitting wrapped up in a rug by one of the open windows, dreamily sunning herself and looking through the pine trees at the sea and sky. The meeting of the aunt and niece was over before either of them was aware of her feelings about it. Mrs. Bain took Evelyn's hand and looked at her for a moment. "I see Dick in your face," she said. The girl bent and kissed her, and Mrs. Bain's eyes filled with smiling tears. A few minutes later Evelyn and Lilian had dragged out two wicker chairs from the drawing room and were seated on either side of Mrs. Bain, talking quietly but readily.

The aunt was eager to hear about her brother, question ing of this and that, free at last to learn of him after all these years of separation, and estrangement. Evelyn answered everything simply and directly. It had all come quite naturally. Nothing had jarred. Even the brown dress was for gotten or accepted as a part of an individuality, different in certain respects to their own, but which they respected and appreciated. When Mr. Bain arrived that evening, coming by the late train, and entered the drawing-room, he found them all seated together hke members of one family. He kissed his beautiful niece with pleasure. Up in the bedroom with Mrs. Bain it was he who opened the inevitable private conversation concerning her. He was in his dressing-room where he was washing himself. "Well, Margaret," he said in jerks, during the process of his ablutions, " she's a beauty — anyway.

" "And as good, George," said Mrs. Bain, in bed and refreshed by the deft toilet ministra tions of her maid, "as she is beautiful. She has all Dick's charm of manner." "Wasn't it — er — a bit of a — pity," said George, now at work with the towel, "that — you — that we didn't make it up?" Mrs. Bain sighed. "I will not say it was not," she said, "I need no reproaches, George, beyond those of my own conscience. I acted — I tried to act for the best. I will be a mother to his child. " She had taken up the book she was going to read, but it lay unopened in her white, ringed hand in the circle of light cast by the shaded reading-lamp on the night-table. Mr. Bain, standing by the dressing-room door, drying his hair with a rough towel, looked at her sitting there in her frilled nightdress and night-cap, and had a sudden feeling of com punction.

Her fine face made lovely with kindly thought and pure with pain, recalled her as she was when he had loved her first — a sort of queen who was far beyond him, as he thought then. He went back into the dressing-room and began to brush his hair vigorously. "After all," he said to himself. "We are only mortal — only mortal, and a man's but a man." He always felt in some curious way that his scrupulous ablutions and renewed toilet when he returned home, freed him from a certain nameless contagion that he brought from Lon don and which troubled him a little. "In fact," he said, aloud, cheerily, "she's an acquisition, my dear — an acquisition ! " Mrs. Bain made no reply, but slowly opened her book and began to read.

Chapter III. Outdoor Aristocrats

The next morning came with the same mellow radiance of clear, cool silver growing into bright and glowing gold. Lilian's meteorologi cal instinct, feeling the break up of this fair St. Martin's summer imminent, and faced with the melancholy monotony of the dank and rainy month that would follow it, was restless at every sunlit hour spent in the house. Another cause was also at work to draw her out. She had heard incidentally, a few days ago, that Charlie Hammond was coming down from Lon don for a few weeks at home, and Mr. Bain had said they had travelled together part of the way last night. Shortly after breakfast, therefore, she pro posed to Evelyn that they should go and see the Hammonds, and, Evelyn at once assenting, the two girls put on their hats and set off. The air was deliciously mild, yet fresh.