La Fenton. A novel

Chapter I

A VILLA at Palermo, built of yellow Sicilian stone, and standing in a garden that was a long tangle of delight. Groves of oranges and lemons trimmed the approach, and palms grouped themselves in tropical picturesque distinctness, towering up to Heaven, and waving their fan-like arms against the deep blue of the sky. Here and there a tall, graceful bamboo shot up into the air, and the white pitcher-shaped flowers of the datura drooped lovingly above your head. VOL. I. B The villa itself was a small square house, with a red tiled roof ; and a balustrade and steps led up to the living rooms. It stood a little back from the road to Monreale, and was surrounded by a high wall, broken in the centre by a majestic gateway, with tall pillars supported by rampant lions and griffins, which looked as if they had been stolen from some grand Italian palace.

One of the gates hung disconsolately off its hinges, and the grass had grown round the base of the pillars, which gave the entrance a dreary, forsaken appearance. Inside, the rooms were large and bare, though they combined with that bareness a certain Eng lish look of comfort. The bright, though cold, tiled floors were relieved by a few soft Eastern rugs, and there was a breath of culture and refinement in the air, which seemed to make its presence felt through the shabby, faded curtains and the darned covers of the chairs. The drawing-room was in a pleasant litter; books reposed upon stools and tables, draw ings in various stages of development were strewed upon the sofas, and there was a general atmosphere of negligent ease and bohemianism. Through an open door you caught a glimpse of a room beyond.

It was larger than the first, and had the north light, so dear to an artist. Near the window of the farther room was placed an easel, upon which rested the half finished portrait of a young girl. The face of the picture was hardly, perhaps, to be described as strikingly handsome : the features were not regular enough. But it was a curiously interesting and attractive countenance, and seemed to have almost a prophetic expression, as if the history of the future were already written upon it. The eyes were dark and lustrous, the profile straight, with a very short upper lip, and the complexion olive. But it was the eyes that held you enchained ; the rest of the face seemed almost to sink into insignificance before those liquid, expressive eyes. As they looked out from the canvas they seemed to have a yearning, beseeching gaze, as if the unsatisfied longing of a restless spirit was enclosed within.

Standing before the easel was a man of about fifty years of age. He had a wan, haggard face, narrow sloping shoulders, and a loose, but not ungraceful, figure. The likeness between himself and tbe portrait was so strong that there was little difficulty in tracing the relationship between them. He stood before the picture, seemingly lost in thoughts which hardly appeared to bring him happiness, for his brow was wrinkled, and there was a look of deep anxiety in his dark eyes. He threw himself down upon a couch, at length, with a half-muttered exclamation of pain, and then he said, gazing still at the picture — " My poor Stella ! How can I leave her alone in this hard world ? How shall I break this terrible news to her? And yet I must, for Dr. Zeccarine has given me only a few more months of life," and he sighed wearily, and looked out at the sunshine, which was throwing dancing, wavering shadows on the glossy leaves of the oranges, and lighting up the deep mauve of the pawlonias.

The world looked so fair, and yet he must leave it all and go forth alone into that great unknown. That was not the thought that was troubling Arthur Darrel. Life had not been such a bed of roses, even in that fair Isle of Sicily, as to make him loath to lay it down. But what troubled him so sorely was the fate of his daughter Stella. Arthur Darrel was the only son of Mr. Edward Darrel, a rich Herefordshire squire, with broad acres and the fine old manor house of La Fenton. Mr. Darrel and his son Arthur had never been congenial ; there were faults, no doubt, on both sides, but Mr. Darrel was an odd wayward man, with an arrogant over-bearing temper, and he had that curious jealousy of his son which is occasionally seen between a man and his heir. Arthur was extremely clever, but in dolent and bohemian in the extreme.

He had a weak, vacillating character. In the army he had got into one scrape after another, till at length he was obliged to apply to his father for so large a sum of money, to extricate himself from his diffi culties, that, although Mr. Darrel paid the debts, he never forgave his son's extrava gance, and they became entirely estranged from each other. Arthur Darrel had a small fortune which he had inherited from his mother, and on this he managed to live. He left the army, and followed the career of an artist, which was much more suited to his taste ; and, in pursuance of this career, he wandered in a desultory way from one foreign land to another. First, he had gone to Spain to paint cigarette girls ; from thence to Egypt to study the Arab type; and he had, at last, halted in Sicily, where he had fallen in love with a beautiful Sicilian girl and had married her.

She was not of the " haute noblesse ; " her family were hardly of the respectable " bourgeoisie ; " but Arthur Darrel was far too desperately in love to weigh anything, and, after a few weeks of courtship, they were married. For one year they lived in a paradise of love, and then she died, after giving birth to their infant daughter, Stella. Arthur Darrel was wild with misery. For weeks he refused to see the child, his only feeling towards it being hatred for its having been the cause of its mother's death. But by slow degrees that feeling died away, and in its place grew a warm, deep love for the helpless little one, and it became his great comfort and joy to have the child with him. That affection had grown and strengthened, till now they were inseparable ; they had no one in the wide world to cling to but each other.

Mr. Darrel had educated Stella entirely himself. It was not, perhaps, a very orthodox young ladies' education, which means, too often, a smattering of many useless things and a sound knowledge of nothing. But she could speak Italian and Sicilian as well as the natives ; she had a good grounding in Latin and Greek, and a fair amount of mathematics. Her one accomplishment was her music ; she had a deep, full contralto voice, and sang with all the passion and fervour of an Italian nature. Arthur Darrel was suddenly startled from his reverie by a quick, light step on the gravel outside, and a moment later the living representation of the picture bounded into the room. " Am I very late ? " she asked, breath lessly, throwing herself down beside him. " It was so lovely down by the sea ! The sand was just like pale grains of silver, and the waves left a little fringe of pink coral along the shore like a ring round a dove's neck.

And then Giulia found so many friends ; and Jacob had a fight — and so-and-so." The person who rejoiced in the name of Jacob came forward to have his wounds inspected. He was called by courtesy a fox terrier, but anything less like that species could hardly be imagined. He was a sort of cross between a spaniel and a bull-dog. He was of a pale-yellow colour, with soft, curly hair, long legs, stumpy tail, and a bullet-shaped head, with a rather heavy under-hung jaw. But whatever the defects of his body, Jacob's heart was in the right place : he was a dog with a mind, and was a most important, privileged person in the Darrel household. " Well, have you any more excuses to make, cara mia?" asked her father, stroking her hair, and looking tenderly into her face. The likeness to the portrait was very striking ; and yet one thing the picture entirely lost, and that was the marvellous light and shade which played across the face.

Every feeling which passed through her mind seemed reflected on that expressive coun tenance. It resembled an April day : sunshine and clouds rippled over the features in quick succession. " But you know that they are not excuses, padre mio," she said, with an indignant light in her eyes, and a pout on the red lips. " You are only teasing me." " Very well, bambina, I will believe it all," and he stooped and kissed the little puckered mouth. " But have you no more exciting adventures to recount to me than Jacob's fights, which, by-the-bye, are a little mono tonous in their frequency, and Giulia's friends ? " " Yes, indeed I have ! " exclaimed Stella. " I have got something really interesting. I met the Principessa Tamagni, and she begged me to tell you that two Englishmen have brought her letters of introduction, and one of them, a Mr. Henry Wavely, who lives near La Fenton, knew you years ago, when he was a boy, and is coming to renew his acquaintance."

" Henry Wavely, of Durban ! " cried Mr. Darrel. " Is it possible? I have not seen him since he was a boy of eighteen. He was a promising youth then. I wonder how much difference fifteen years will have made in him," and Mr. Darrel's thoughts wandered back into that old, past life which had fled so far from him. Stella watched her father silently, but with a look of anxiety in her dark eyes. His cheeks were so hollow, and his eyes so sunken, and there was such an air of malaise and suffering upon the face, that, though she was still too much of a child to take in the gravity of the symptoms, it sent a cold, aching chill through her heart. She laid her hand gently on his, and said — " Are you more tired to-night, father ? You look so pale." " No, child," he answered, wearily ; " but I have been a little more breathless than usual.

I think it is this horrid sirocco." " But you promised to get so strong in the spring," she pleaded ; " and we were going to do all kinds of delightful things. But when the summer comes, that will cure you, will it not?" And she threw her arms round him, and pressed the wan face close to hers. " Yes, yes," he said, half querulously. " In the summer I shall be better — perhaps." At that moment the cracked, twanging sound of the door-bell startled them. Giulia came in, and announced that a Signorino Inglese had come to see the Signore. " Show him in," said Mr. Darrel, turning a shade paler. Giulia disappeared, and a minute later Mr. Wavely was announced. He was a tall man, rather over thirty years of age, with a pale, slightly melan choly face, brown hair, and deep blue eyes with long dark lashes.

It was a striking face, partly from its beauty and partly on account of a peculiarly sweet expression that played round the mouth, and which crept into his eyes when he spoke to a child or a woman. Henry Wavely was one of those intensely sympathetic people. Sym pathy seemed to exude from every pore of his being, and he possessed that subtle perilous charm of identifying himself entirely, for the time being, with the interests of those with whom he conversed. There were people who described him as a " dangerous flirt." A clever woman of the world once remarked to her youthful daughter, upon entering society : " Remember it is not the men who make you prettv speeches who are to be feared, but those who, by some indefinable means, make you feel that you are the one person in the world to them."

That was exactly what Henry Wavely had the power of doing. It was a dangerous gift, especially when bestowed upon a young and strikingly hand some man. Few women were proof against a glance from those blue eyes, or could fail to be moved bv even some commonplace remark, made full of meaning by the expressive tones of that soft, well-modulated voice. And yet Henry Wavely was not a flirt in the accepted term ; but he loved to please, and forgot too often the consequences that might result. As he now entered the room he had a half expectant look on his face, which turned to admiration as his eyes rested on the graceful figure of Stella, who leaned carelessly against the window, dangling her large straw hat in her hand. VOL. I. C Jacob growled ominously. He disliked visitors because they had a habit of sitting in his particular chair, which was a great trial to him ; but he had too good manners to take active measures for their removal, and so sat like a martyr under the sofa, praying, doubt less, in his heart that the intruder would soon depart.

Mr. Darrel rose as the visitor was announced, and shook him warmly by the hand, and then introduced him to Stella, who came forward with all her southern grace of manner, and welcomed her father's old friend. Henry Wavely held the small hand in his a moment longer than was quite necessary, and the admiration in his face deepened as he met those dark, lustrous eyes which looked into his with a thoughtful, inquiring gaze. " Well," said Mr. Darrel, after the two men had conversed for some time upon old days, and had caught up the threads of the early friendship, and rivetted them again in the way only possible to some natures, " and why have you come to Sicily ? " " To draw and write a little in my dilettante way : I am a terrible bohemian. I love to wander among new scenes and people ; the study of human nature is the most interesting thing in life."

" And so you have come to study Sicilians and paint their country," said Mr. Darrel. " Well, you will find some curious incongrui ties — -some odd customs; and often you will be inclined to imagine that you have gone back some hundred years." " I see to whom I shall have to apply for information," answered Wavely, smil ing. " I could tell you a few interesting facts," replied Mr. Darrel, " but Stella and I live quite out of the world. She is hardly old enough to go into society, and I am too ill now to get beyond the garden," and a shade of deep pain crossed his thin, haggard face. And then turning to Stella, he said : " Go and tell Giulia to bring us some tea." As the girl disappeared, he leaned forward eagerly, and said — " Tell me about La Fenton. Is it all as it was ? I have a craving to see the old place again before I die."

Wavely started as he answered — " Surely you are not so bad as that ! With rest and quiet you will recover." Mr. Darrel shook his head. " There is no hope. The doctors give me but a few more months of life : my heart is seriously affected. For myself, I am hardly sorry, but for Stella — " and his face con tracted in a sudden spasm of agony, and his breath came through his ashen lips in hard gasps, while a bluish pallor overspread his cheeks. Wavely sprang up to call someone, but Mr. Darrel made him a sign to desist, and in a few minutes he recovered. " It is nothing," he said, faintly ; " only one of those attacks which come when I am agitated. But," he continued, " it is hard to die and leave my child to strangers, for the Philip Darrels are strangers to her. She must stay with them till she is of age ; I have made him her guardian."

" Have you no other relations that you choose Philip Darrel for this charge?" inquired Wavely, in a tone of almost conster nation." Mr. Darrel looked up quickly, and encoun tered the blue eyes bent upon him with a penetrating gaze of surprise. " I suppose you think it strange that I choose to send my daughter to the man who has supplanted me," he replied, with an uneasy laugh ; " but after all, it was hardly his fault if my father chose to leave La Fenton to him instead of to me ; he could not prevent an old man's wilfulness." " Say, rather," exclaimed Henry Wavely, a sudden fire darting into his eyes, " that he did not wish to prevent it ! — that he schemed and worked for nothing else ! " The words seemed to cut clear and sharp through the air between the two men, and to go on vibrating and echoing long after they had ceased.

" Schemed and worked for nothing else," seemed to be beaten with sledge hammers on Mr. Darrel's brain. And then he cried, hoarsely, gripping Wavely's arm with his long thin fingers — " How dare you say these things of a man who has always borne the highest of characters ? " " I have only repeated what has been in everyone's mouth : that Philip Darrel got La Fenton by foul means. Why did you not return to England after your father's death, and look into things yourself ? " " Of what use would it have been ?" said Mr. Darrel, wearily. The sudden excitement had died out of his face, leaving it more pallid than before. " I knew that my father would keep his word. He wrote to me after my marriage to say that I was dead to him, and must not expect one penny at his death ; that I had always been a disgrace, and that rather than see La Fenton mine, he would sell every acre of it."

" Men say and write those kind of things," replied Wavely, " but it does not follow that they always do them, unless pressure is brought to bear. Mr. Darrel had a violent temper, but he was a just man, and proud of the old stock. I do not believe that he would have disinherited you for a distant cousin if there had been fair play. ' Mais les absents ont toujours tort,' and it was easy to fit in the thin edge of the wedge, and add a little fuel to the already lighted fire." LA FEN TO TV. 25 " You did not know my father," said Mr. Darrel, stiffly, in a hard, grating voice that sounded like two flint stones being rubbed together. " He was utterly unyielding ; he considered his conduct perfectly just towards me after my having fallen so short of his standard of excellence. No one was less surprised at the will than myself.

I assure you, my dear Harry, you have allowed your imagination, which, if I remember right, was always vivid, to run away with you. In a country neighbourhood people have little else to do but to discuss their neighbours' affairs, and so they have conjured up all kinds of impossible theories, and fabricated a story that would do for a three-volume novel, with my poor cousin Philip as the villain, and now Stella will be the heroine," and he laughed a laugh that had no sound of mirth in it. Wavely bit his lips and gnawed his small brown moustache for several moments in silence. He saw with quick perception that his words had gone deeper than appeared, and that Mr. Darrel was combating more with his own heart than with his friend, so he refrained from further argument, only saying — " I hope that you are right, but I do not trust Philip Darrel ; and I wish that you had chosen another guardian for your daughter."

At that moment Stella and the tea ap peared, so all further discussion was at an end. Wavely watched her white fingers dance in and out among the cups, and the graceful ease of that willowy figure as she bent over her father, sending her heart out to him through those wondrous eyes. He caught a glimpse of the portrait behind her, and decided that it was like and yet not like. The picture was not really beautiful, while the original was fair beyond words. As he looked again, he divined the true difference between them : it was as impossible for any canvas to catch those transient gleams that shot across her face as it would be to enchain the soft wayward hues of an opal. It was not the clear cut features, or the crown of silken tresses, that gave the ineffable charm, but the quick, ever-varying lights that played round her mouth, and shone in those luminous eyes.

Time fled away in the wonderful manner that time does fly when some spell of happiness enfolds us, and we almost comprehend the words, " And Time shall be no more." At last Wavely rose to depart. " Are you making some stay here ? " in quired Mr. Darrel. " Yes, as long as the spirit moves me. You know I am a terrible creature of im pulse ; " and he laughed. " Yes, I remember that in the old days," said Mr. Darrel ; " and you have not out grown it, eh ? " "Do we often outgrow our failings?" questioned Wavely, with a dubious look in his handsome face. " My experience is that they generally outgrow us ! " A moment later, and he was out in the soft, scented air, with Stella beside him. She had volunteered to show him a shorter path to the town. They walked on silently : the girl was shy. She had seen few people, owing to the retired solitary life which she had led with her father.

And the men that she had known had not been like Wavely. They had either treated her as a child or with the stiff courtesy due to " une jeune fille." But he was entirely different : he talked to her in an easy, unaffected way that won her con fidence, and she opened out like a flower in the sunshine. They walked slowly on for several minutes, and then Wavely stopped and leaned against the stem of an orange-tree. Jacob had followed his mistress rather sullenly ; he disapproved of new acquaintances, and dis trusted all strangers, and he sat down now with the expression on his comic face of a bored chaperon who has been out for many seasons on the treadmill of society. " That's a knowing dog," said Wavely, eyeing Jacob, " but he does not seem an effusive person." " Jacob rarely makes friends," replied Stella, laughing.

" I trust that his mistress does not emulate his example," inquired Wavely, bending his head a little nearer to hers, as he continued, " We must be friends, Miss Darrel. I have known your father ever since I was a boy, too many years ago to count. Will you let me continue that friendship to his daughter ? " " Of course you shall," said Stella, the rich blood flowing into her face. " Do you know," she went on, eagerly, " that I have never had a friend before ? Father and I, and Jacob, have just lived here by ourselves, and I have wondered so often what it would be like to have a real friend all to myself — some one who would be always sympathetic, and to whom I could tell all my joys and sorrows — Is that not what friendship means ? " and she lifted her eyes to his with an almost appealing gaze.

" It is a high, lofty view to take of it," he answered, a smile curling round his mouth, " but shall we try to attain to it, and make our friendship bear some resemblance to your ideal ? '' As he spoke, those lines of Moore floated across his mind — " She came but for friendship, And took away love." Are not the two so interwoven with each other that it is often well-nigh impossible to disentangle them, and do we not of ten delude ourselves with the semblance of friendship, when it is love's fiery nectar that we are consuming? " Will you fulfil your part of our bargain," whispered Wavely, in his soft, musical voice, " and let me really share your joys and sorrows, and help you if you are in trouble?" " Yes, yes," cried Stella, quickly, and then she stopped, and her white forehead drew itself into little lines and puckers as she said, half-sadly : " But it cannot be, Mr. Wavely.

Do you not see that it would be all on one side, for how could I help you, who are so much older and cleverer than I am ? You would do all the giving and I all the receiving. Surely no bargain that is not equal could answer ? " " Il-y-a toujours un qui aime, et l'autre qui se laisse aimer," quoted Wavely, rather irre levantly. " But that is love," said Stella, "and ours is only friendship, which is quite different." " Is it ? " said Wavely to himself, and then aloud, " Yes, of course, I had forgotten." He had been wondering how those silken tresses of hair, which lay coiled about her head in loving meshes, would look set free and falling around her in a cloud of blue black, with the white pillars of her throat and arms glistening through its soft haze. He brought himself back with an effort, and continued — " Do you know what the friendship of one VOL. I. D pure white soul, like yours, is to a hardened man of the world like me ?

Do not withhold that blessing from me, because at first it may be my privilege to aid you. Be sure that the tables will turn, and that the ministrations will be all on your side." As he turned to go, he took her little hands in his, and, with a sudden impulse, raised them to his lips and pressed a kiss on the rose-tipped fingers. Jacob growled angrily ; he considered that this was too much for mortal dog to stand, and he looked with a threatening expression at Wavely's legs, after which, he took up a position in the road, with one ear cocked, and watched the retreating figure of his enemy with a righteous scorn depicted in his eyes. Stella leant her face against the iron bars of the gate, and likewise watched that lithe, graceful figure. She could not understand the new feeling that seemed to have sprung up in her heart.

It was so wonderful — like some fairy story — that this man, so clever, so handsome, with eyes that seemed to tell her things that she had only dreamt of when she had gone to sleep under the orange trees and had awoke to find the moonbeams kissing her, that this man should ask for her friend ship. " He shall have it always — always," she whispered to herself. " I will be true to our bargain," and she pressed her face a httle harder against the bars, till the cold iron seemed to penetrate through her white forehead and leave a little chill on her heart. Wavely turned once and waved his hand. She seemed to him like an angel looking forth from the gates of Paradise into the great wicked world, and his heart contracted strangely as he thought of her fighting her way alone and unaided, and having all her innocence and all her beliefs gradually rubbed off.

" Ah ! " he thought, cynically, " she will grow like the rest. The breath of heaven that seems to float round some natures is soon dispelled — brushed away like the bloom from a peach." Wavely had a strongly imaginative, artistic mind, enthusiastic perhaps to a fault, strangely influenced by his environment, and with a craving for affection. If he cared for a woman he was not content till, in return, she gave him of her best affection, and then, alas, too often he trod that love in the dust, or cast it aside for some new fancy. Just now, Stella and her surroundings had taken possession of him. The picturesque ness appealed to his artistic side, and his sympathy was strongly called forth by finding his old friend dying and leaving behind him a child of hardly seventeen, with a face that might well have made a less susceptible heart than Wavely's beat more quickly.

And this girl with her wonderful beauty, was to be sent to Philip Darrel ! A look of almost horror leaped into Wavely's eyes at the thought. " Can I be mistaken in that man after all ? " he said to himself. " Can anything good be hidden behind that evil counten ance ? " Henry Wavely's home, Durban Manor, lay within three miles of La Fenton, and many were the wild weird tales that had reached his ears with regard to the old squire's death, and the present owner Philip Darrel's participation in it. The poor people affirmed that the squire " walked ; " that he had been seen in the churchyard one stormy night, with his grey hair blown about by the wind, and his blanched ashen face shining out of the darkness with unearthly brilliancy, while his claw-like fingers tore at the door of the Darrel vault, as if seeking admittance there.