A Week in Arcadia [A novel.] Illustrated by Caroline Paterson

Front matter

A WEEK IN ARCADIA, BY THE SAME AUTHOR. Crown 8z/ot cloth elegants price 3s. 6d.} THROUGH A REFINERS FIRE. attracts from IRevlews. Standard.— 'The tale is prettily written, and well suited for the purpose.' Academy. — ' Young ladies who flirt too much should read ' ' Through a Refiner's Fire. " ' Nonconformist. — ' A simple novelette suitable for grown-up girls, dealing principally with the trials and temptations to which they may be exposed when entering upon the world, and illustrating the evil resulting from a vain coquetry.' Schoolmistress. — ' No one can fail to be interested in it.' Notts Daily Guardian. — ( Not the most fastidious need hesitate to place in the hands of a schoolgirl.' St. James's Gazette. — 'A simple love story.' Perth Advertiser. — 'The story is beautifully and simply told.' LONDON : GRIFFITH, FARRAN, OKEDEN & WELSH, WEST CORNER OF ST. PAUL'S CHURCHYARD. '903l4s*piOAtf " Mnrprt .... rushed to the window and hallooed and gesticulated wildly, as the boat drew near."

Page 32 " A Week in Arcadia." A WEEK IN ARCADIA. BY ELEANOR HOLMES, AUTHOR OF ( IN TIME TO COME,' 'THROUGH A REFINER'S FIRE,' ETC. ' Days are like years in the love of the young.' — Bulwer Lytton. Illustrated by Caroline Paterson, LONDON: GRIFFITH, FARRAN, OKEDEN & WELSH, SUCCESSORS TO NEWBERY AND HARRIS, WEST CORNER OF ST. PAUL'S CHURCHYARD ; AND SYDNEY, N.S.W. The Rights of Translation and of Reproduction are Reserved. TO MRS. L. VALENTINE, IN GRATEFUL ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF HER FRIENDSHIP, ENCOURAGEMENT, AND SYMPATHY, THIS STORY IS AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED. CONTENTS. CHAP. TACE I. A FAMILY CONCLAVE, ..... 7 II. A BAD BEGINNING, ..... 20 III. FATES FORETOLD, ..... 34 IV. A DIAMOND IN THE ROUGH. .... 48 V. IN TWO MINDS, ..... 62 VI. STRANGE REVELATIONS, . . .78 VII. FORBIDDEN FRUIT, ..... 92 VIII.

A DAUGHTER OF HETH, ..... 108 IX. THE STRONG MAN BOUND, . . . .121 X. DOWN THE STREAM, ..... 134 XI. A FALSE STEP, ...... I47 XII. MEANWHILE, ...... l6l XIII. HIS BETTER SELF, . . . . 1 72 XIV. MINISHED AND BROUGHT LOW, . . . 186 XV. AS ONE POSSESSED, ..... I98 XVI. TANGLED THREADS, ..... 208 XVII. THE SNARE OF THE FOWLEK, .... 219 XVIII. DEEP WATERS, ...... 236 XIX. THE DOOR OF DISMAY, ..... 250 XX. PRODIGAL SONS, ..... 264 XXI. BREAKERS AHEAD, ..... 277 XXII. FULL TO OVERFLOWING, .... 291 XXIII. ON THE BRINK, ..... 308 XXIV. LEFT BEHIND, ...... 322 XXV. DISARMED, ...... 333 XXVI. EXPIATION, ...... 347 XXVII. THE BEGINNING AND THE END, . . . 361 XXVIII. FATES FULFILLED, ..... 374

Chapter I

A FAMILY CONCLAVE. 0 life ! O beyond ! Thou art strange, thou art sweet ! ' OR one week,' said Lady Maitland, laying down her pen and closing her account-book, ' I can manage it, but not for longer.' ' The boys are going to be there a fortnight,' observed her daughter Jean from the window ledge, where she was sitting half in and half out of a square, low-ceilinged, old-fashioned salon, which had been converted by herculean efforts on the part of her mother and sister into a very habitable sitting-room.

Not certainly on the part of Jean herself, whose attitude of graceful indolence at the present moment was on the whole a very faithful index to her general disposition. ' The boys, as you call them,' replied Lady Maitland, with a gentle smile, — ' though I hardly think that they would recognise themselves under that name, — have very long purses at their backs, and I have not.' 'You see,' said Jean's elder sister, a brown-haired, brown-eyed maiden of about three-and-twenty summers, whose trim figure and alert movements presented a striking contrast to the leisurely inactivity of her junior, ' it will be six francs a day without wine and candles, and then there is the journey.' ' I have done the whole calculation,' interrupted Lady Maitland good-humouredly, ' and the result is that we can spend exactly a week there without overstepping our bounds.' ' Well,' exclaimed both girls in unison, ' it will be delightful if this weather will but last.' It was a perfect spring day in the middle of March ; not the treacherous and capricious spring of these northern climes, where the sun kisses your cheek and the wind stabs you like an assassin in your very vitals, but a glowing, balmy, vivid spring in the heart of sunny France, where for one happy fortnight in the year the air is like summer though the trees are still bare, and the sky is cloudless though the fields are yet brown ; where, if you shut your eyes, and feel only the soft breath of the violet-scented breezes, you could think it was 'the leafy month of June' rather than the 'roaring moon of daffodil and crocus.' Till within the last few days winter had lain heavy on the land.

There had been long hard frosts, bleak winds, chilling rains ; and lastly, just as the violets were beginning to peep forth timidly, came a five days' freezing mist, which fell upon the trees like the clearest crystal, thickening visibly every hour, until the burdened branches creaked and groaned and crashed beneath the terrific weight of frozen water, and the whole country for leagues around was strewn with ruined timber. And now, behold, it was like summer, and Jean Maitland, after the manner of a lazy butterfly, was sunning herself on the window-ledge. The house was built upon the brow of a steep hill leading up from the river. Seen from below, it looked quite palatial, with its venerable facade and battlemented towers. Its proportions shrank visibly, however, when you approached it. Instead of the solid block of masonry you had been led to expect, there was only a narrow two-storeyed house built round two sides of a square, boasting no entrance save through the window of the dining-room, itself a meanly-furnished, unattractive apartment, with tiled floor and far more than the needful supply of doors and ill-fitting windows.

This south side of the house, looking towards the broad, silvery river and stately city beyond, was let by the owner — an eccentric French baroness who dressed like a peasant and lived like a recluse — to such English families as were willing to exchange the com parative luxury of the town flats for the bracing air and severely simple accommodation of the Tourelles. Here lived Lady Maitland, the widow of an Indian civilian, who contrived to make her modest income, supplemented by the small pensions of her two daughters, go twice as far even in this ville de luxe, and with twice as pleasant results both to herself and to them as would have been possible in the mother country. Society smiled on them here no whit less kindly because they had only two servants and no carriage. They were neither patronized on the one hand, nor ignored on the other ; but recognised very cordially both by French and English for what they were, — ladies of perfect breeding and refinement, — and treated accordingly.

It has always been a mystery to me why in those comparatively rare cases when our compatriots abroad are neither insolvent nor impecunious, neither vulgar nor arrogant, neither of doubtful nor of tarnished reputation, they should always be so much more easy of access and gracious of demeanour than they are in their own country. You can be neighbours in England for years and remain strangers for ever ; while in foreign life a few weeks' intercourse may often cement a friendship that shall last for time and eternity. It was scarcely surprising, then, that the Maitlands, mother no less than daughters, should be willing to brave the rigid winters and tropical summers of St. Gatien for the sake of its pleasant social atmosphere and the simple free life engendered by the happy absence of pretentious stiffness in the society which they frequented.

The trip now under consideration in this family con clave had been proposed to Lady Maitland by two young men, to whom, for the sake of their respective mothers, she had shown constant and open-handed hospitality during the past winter. They were boarding with a French family in the country, nominally for the sake of learning the language with greater facility, but really, in the case of one of them at least, with the object of passing a few months in seasonable retirement after some slight outbursts of youthful extravagance. The Tourelles was so convenient a half-way house to the town, and the society of its three inmates so bright and inspiriting, that few days passed in which one or other of the two young men did not turn in there, and spend a pleasant hour in the little quaint, foreign - looking drawing-room, which, whether in winter or summer, had always the unmistakeable air — ■ conspicuous for its absence in the ordinary French salon — of being inhabited rather than merely occupied.

So it befell that, before spring had fairly begun, they were quite established as habitues of the house, and no one was surprised to-day, early as it was, when a peal at the big, iron gates was followed by the announce ment in the little white-capped servant's broken lan guage of — ' M. Algernon 'Olroide.' Enter a young man whose age, even to the Maitlands, was more or less enveloped, as age should generally be, in a shroud of mystery. He was very tall, very slight, and loosely knit, but the term 'hobbledehoy' could not by any possibility have been applied to him. He was entirely devoid, both in appearance and manner, of anything like youthful crudity, although his face was as smooth as a boy's, and bore no impress as yet of any severe intellectual strain or mental struggle. His enemies, of whom he had no lack, were annoyed by the quiet assurance of his address, and pronounced him intolerably conceited.

His friends, of whom Lady Maitland was one of the staunchest, were attracted, in the first in stance, by an old-fashioned courtesy of manner, rare in this generation ; and their interest was further enlisted in his favour by a certain reserve and thoughtfulness that seemed to hint at an unusual depth of nature and loftiness of aim. The probabilities are that neither enemies nor friends had wholly misread him, and that his defects and perfections were alike exaggerated ; but there are certain persons who always require the glare of the footlights to show them up, and for these the common light of every day is at once distorting and misleading. 'Well, Lady Maitland?' dropping his eye-glasses as he spoke, with an adroit movement of his strongly marked, expressive eyebrows, and looking over at the two girls with a smile of amused expectancy. ' And what about Chateau Royal ? ' His pronunciation of French, like everything else about him, was a shade exaggerated, and Jean promptly mimicked it, without, however, in the smallest degree disturbing his composure. ' When did you come back ? ' asked Dorothy, lifting her eyes for a moment from the long strip of Breton embroidery at which she was working with commendable industry.

It was characteristic of this girl that she could not be idle for a single moment. 'This morning early. I go back by the last train. I do hope I may be allowed to take the rooms.' ' We can go for a week,' said Lady Maitland. ' Come, that's better than I dared to expect. Miss Maitland would not hold out much hope when I first broached the subject to her.' ' She was estimating half the night,' observed Jean mischievously. ' I could not go to sleep for the mental arithmetic she was working at.' 'Well, we certainly could not have gone without counting the cost,' replied the elder sister, with a laugh and a blush, the latter called forth by a significant glance from Holroyd. ' Miss Jean would never do that about anything.' ' Certainly not, while she could get any one else to do it for her,' Jean answered composedly. ' Well, that is no doubt a very pleasant theory — for oneself, and, at any rate, it ensures a peaceable existence.' 'What is that out of?' the girl inquired saucily, drawing a ring that was flashing brilliantly in the sunlight up and down the third finger of her left hand with a dainty gesture that reminded one irresistibly of a kitten.

It had the effect, certainly, of drawing his eyes to the ring, and any one watching him closely at that moment might have noticed that rather a curious expression flitted across his face at sight of it. Nevertheless, it had been there ever since he first knew Jean. It was no secret that the second Miss Maitland was engaged to be married to a young curate in England, who was only waiting for the necessary living to claim her as his wife. He certainly could not have afforded to buy her the gorgeous jewel now glittering on her slim white hand ; but it had belonged to his mother, who, with a self-abnegation not often found among the mothers of only sons, had insisted on his plighting his troth with it before Jean returned to her foreign home, and entered upon that long period of indefinite waiting called by courtesy an engagement.

To judge by appearances, however, it had not sat very heavily on her so far, as Holroyd had already discovered, with a mixture of pride and uneasiness. He believed — with what reason remains to be seen — that Jean's affections might easily be diverted into another channel. In answer to her rallying question, he only asked coolly ' if she would never give him credit for being in the least original ? ' ' Oh yes,' responded the girl with lazy good-humour ; ' as an actor would be original. He can give new interpretations to old parts. So can you.' I am immensely flattered,' said Holroyd, with an elaborate bow in Jean's direction. 'To be a really great actor is to be a genius.' 'But did I apply the adjective "really great" to your acting powers ? ' asked Jean smilingly. 'Are you two going to spar like this at Chateau Royal?' demanded Lady Maitland, who had been listening with no little inward amusement to an en counter in which both parties were pretty evenly matched. ' Oh, I have no quarrel with Mr. Holroyd when he is Mr. Holroyd ; but sometimes he assumes the part of a mentor, which does not please me, though I allow that he plays it to perfection.' ' I have to play it with De Vane pretty often.

It is astonishing what an aptitude that boy has for getting into mischief. That is one reason why I should be so thankful to bring you all down to Chateau Royal for a little while. De Vane does not really enjoy an Arcadian life unless he has some one to play about with.' ' What do you call an Arcadian life ? ' inquired the irrepressible Jean. ' Plain living,' replied Holroyd, ' without the high thinking insisted on by Mr. Matthew Arnold. Perfect weather, — likethis,for example, — perfect immunityfrom care or worry, harmonious scenery that neither excites one's awe to any excessive degree, nor yet overtasks one's powers of admiration ; and, to crown all, congenial society, with just a little flavour of romance in it' ' Doesn't he talk exactly like a book ? ' Jean observed teasingly. ' Perfect immunity from care or worry is a good deal to expect for a whole week,' said Lady Maitland, with a smile that was almost a sigh. ' And where is the romance to come from in this instance ? ' added Jean coquettishly, and, whether of set purpose or not, her speedwell-blue eyes held Holroyd's spellbound and motionless for full thirty seconds before he answered composedly, — ' I expect old Wynter to provide that for us.

He is coming back with me this evening.' ' Mr. Wynter ! How extremely disagreeable ! ' and Jean drew her eyebrows together with a look of un mistakeable disapprobation. ' If he heard you say that I am sure he would feel that he had not lived in vain. It is almost a matter of pride with him that no pretty woman has ever yet been able to endure him.' 'That I simply don't believe — that it is his pride, I mean. When men talk like that, one knows so well what it means.' ' What does it mean ? I really ask for informa tion.' ' Jean is so capable of giving it to you,' said Lady Maitland, smiling quietly to herself at her daughter's air of superior penetration. ' Oh, you may both laugh at me as much as you please ; but I have always remarked that when a man hates women it is only because some one woman hasn't loved him.' ' I'll tell him you said so, and see if he winces.' ' You may.

I would tell him myself if he ever gave me the chance ; but he doesn't even take the trouble to say " How do you do ? " properly ; only just growls like a bear when he gives you his great brown paw. He is the rudest man I ever saw in my life.' ' I am very glad he will be there,' said Lady Maitland. ' He will chaperon you and Dorothy for me whenever I am too tired.' ' I don't want to go a bit, now that I know he is coming,' pouted Jean. ' I can't think what makes him want to go to a place like Chateau Royal.

He must know that I dislike him.' ' Perhaps,' suggested Holroyd, ' the knowledge does not materially disturb his peace of mind.' 'The fact is,' said Dorothy, with a demure smile, 'Jean has never quite forgiven him for yawning in her presence the first time you brought him to see us three months ago.' ' Not only so,' replied Jean quite seriously, ' but he looked at me literally as if he didn't see me.' ' Well, I can allow that, under the circumstances, that was an unpardonable offence.' ' It was horrid ; he made me feel quite invisible for a quarter of an hour.' ' I should often like to be invisible for a quarter of an hour,' observed Holroyd musingly. ' It would be such a blessing to know what people really thought of one behind one's back.' ' Perhaps,' said Lady Maitland, with a gentle irony that the young man was wise enough never to resent B from her, 'the first thing you would discover would be that people were a good deal less occupied with you than you had ever suspected.' ' And the second ? ' he asked [smilingly, though the slight red that flitted across his cheeks showed that this little shaft had gone home. ' The first always implies a second, Lady Maitland.' ' The second would be that — to quote a certain old Irishwoman of my acquaintance — you would generally find that your enemies were your best friends ! ' ' In that case I should have no lack of friends, and Miss Jean would head the list' But Jean was apparently so overwhelmed by the prospect of Mr. Wynter's unwelcome presence in the Arcadia of her imagination that for once she had no rejoinder ready. ' I wish he would sprain his ankle, or dislocate his shoulder, or disable himself in some harmless way,' she ejaculated petulantly when Holroyd rose to take leave. ' Jeanie, my child, don't say such things even in fun ! ' remonstrated her mother, whereat the girl had the grace to hang her head and look a little ashamed. ' Shall I tell him he will be de trop ? ' asked Holroyd blandly. ' Certainly not,' replied Jean, with a toss of her blonde head. ' I should be sorry to give him the satisfaction of supposing I ever wasted a moment's consideration on him.' Holroyd's smile as he walked away was full of hidden meaning.

There was likely, he felt, to be no lack of the romantic element in the picture he had drawn before hand of ' A Week in Arcadia.'

Chapter II

A BAD BEGINNING. ' Though honest, too young not to be changeable.' i P this is Arcadia, is it ? ' cried Jean Maitland, putting her head out of the carriage window when the train stopped next day at a small wayside station bearing the name of Chateau Royal. Two young men, who had been watching anxiously for its arrival, ran forward immediately to open the door. ' There is no hurry,' observed Holroyd as his companion began eagerly to bundle the wraps and packages out on the platform, before proceeding to help Lady Maitland and her two daughters to descend the steep ladder - like steps by which the French persist in climbing up to their compartments. ' This is the mail train, if you please, and there is a brisk flirtation going on between the man in charge of the bags and the young person who brings down the letters.

If the train goes off much under ten minutes, I shall be surprised.' The event proved that Holroyd was right. The smaller parcels had all been collected and placed in the ramshackle old vehicle waiting outside ; the tickets had been given up, and De Vane, whose French was not his strong point, had plunged into an excited argument with the stationmaster on the subject of existing railway arrangements in France, before the train bethought itself of moving on with a jerk and a grunt, leaving the 'young person' dis consolate on the platform, and waving tender farewells to her friend in charge of the mails. ' She will be glad enough to be rid of him by and by, when it is a question of marriage,' remarked Holroyd placidly, as he turned away at last from his dispassionate contemplation of this slightly comical spectacle. 'You jump to conclusions very quickly,' said Jean laughingly. 'All flirtations don't end in marriage.' ' No ; for the matter of that, all engagements don't end in marriage,' he answered, with rather a meaning smile. ' Well, De Vane, if you don't want to be shut up as a harmless lunatic, may I suggest that it would be as well to stop slanging that worthy official for doing his duty ? ' ' His duty indeed ! ' grumbled Alured. 'An English porter would have whipped that box out of the van and on to the 'bus in half a jiffey, while this fool keeps it in pawn for ten minutes till the train dawdles on.

I should like to kick him ; ' and he glared wrathfully at the unconscious stationmaster, who replied by taking off his hat to the ladies. 'John Bull is as rampant as ever, I see,' said Lady Maitland, with an amused smile at the young man's boyish impatience of all foreign customs. ' He will be in prison for assault before I have done with him,' replied Holroyd. ' Are you going to drive or walk, Lady Maitland ? It is not far.' She glanced doubtfully at the dusty leather seats of the rickety vehicle, and shook her head. ' I would rather walk, I think, if one of you would let me have an arm.' De Vane hastened to offer her his, and Lady Maitland was presently fully occupied in trying to keep pace with his lengthy strides. Jean walked more leisurely a few yards in their rear, intent apparently on looking for primroses in the budding hedges.

They certainly presented a curious contrast to each other — these two young Englishmen whom fate had thrown for the moment into such close and constant companionship. Alured De Vane was a raw, unformed youth of twenty, with a guileless disposition, incapable of sus picion, and an almost boyish simplicity of manner. With such a name, Jean constantly assured him he ought to have been a poet, a finished scholar, and a fine gentleman rolled into one ; and, in point of fact, he was nothing more than an overgrown schoolboy. ' But I have been at Oxford a couple of terms,' Alured would say deprecatingly in answer to these mocking speeches. ' Yes, and been sent down for a couple more,' retorted Miss Jean wickedly, 'for keeping badgers, or bears, or monkeys, or something of that sort in your rooms. Why do you not take pattern by Mr. Holroyd ? ' ' Well, he's an awfully good fellow, to be sure ; but I don't see exactly how I am to become like him.

Besides, it strikes me, Miss Jean, you are always rather rough on poor Holroyd when he is in your company.' ' It is good for him,' Jean would answer demurely. ' He has the makings of a very nice man in him, and some day his wife will be greatly obliged to me.' On the present occasion, however, Jean was un usually quiet, and Alured was secretly astonished at her mood. Meanwhile the other two had gone ahead just far enough to be practically tete-a-tete, and Holroyd was improving the occasion with his customary adroitness. It was not in his nature to be left for two minutes alone with any woman, without at once endeavouring to establish something of an individual relationship between himself and her. If he had been taken prisoner in the Middle Ages, he would assuredly have wheedled his gaoler's womankind, whether wife, sister, or daughter, into conniving at his escape.

Had he been a dignitary of the Romish or even the High Anglican Church in these or any other days, his confessional would have been frequented by throngs of the ' devout and honour able women,' who from the days of St. Paul downwards have ever been such fierce partizans of sacerdotalism in all its many forms. Nor could Algernon Holroyd justly have been blamed for exercising this influence, inasmuch as it was born with him. His danger lay in the snare it too often proved to his own moral integrity. Edged tools and fire are not more dangerous playthings than human hearts. Holroyd had long since discovered that the self which came uppermost in conversation with Dorothy Maitland was a particularly attractive one, aspiring and even high-souled, poetical and romantic — one, in fine, that he greatly liked to contemplate.

In this pleasing self-scrutiny Dorothy unwittingly aided him. She was less admired but far more beloved than her younger sister, possessing, to a degree that many of her sex would do well to cultivate, that en viable gift of putting people in good humour with them selves, which is supposed by certain narrow-minded and short-sighted persons to be incompatible with perfect sincerity. Without the smallest intent to ' flatter with her lips,' the girl managed to say and do exactly the right thing to every one who came within her circle. It was a kind of heart-tactfulness, a spiritual electricity that kept up a powerful current of kindliness and good feeling in her atmosphere ; and Holroyd, who, as I have hinted, possessed a singularly complex nature, found himself unspeakably soothed and rested in the company of this clear-eyed maiden, in whose red-brown orbs he could sometimes discern a glorified reflection of his own ideal. ' So our dream has come to pass after all,' he said, bending towards her in an unconsciously lover-like attitude as they walked along the towing path beside the swift, shallow river.

She smiled the pleased, shy smile that has just begun to be self-conscious. 'Jean says the Philistines will be upon us long before the week is over.' ' Heaven forbid ! What could we do with the Archers or the Fishers, or even Miss Currie, in an Arcadian place like this ? ' Considering that a little scented note from Miss Currie was at that moment reposing against his heart in his waistcoat pocket, and that he had suffered both the Archers and the Fishers to hope that their bolts and baits, metaphorically speaking, were neither shot nor spread in vain, it is to be feared that this deroga tory mention of their names was scarcely loyal ; and so his inward monitor gave him to understand with prompt and unpleasant acumen. He hastened to silence it. ' You don't know how lonely I have been here.' ' I can guess.

Mr. De Vane would not care in the least for your pursuits, nor you for his. I can't think how you have managed to get on so peaceably all this time.' ' Oh, it is not difficult to get on with him, he is such an awfully good-hearted fellow ; but at the same time you can understand that it is fatiguing in the long-run to have to put away the best part of oneself under lock and key.' Yes ; Dorothy could understand it quite well. There was a bend in the river at this point, and before them lay the lovely little village, nestling at the foot of a steep hill, on the summit of which rose the magnificent ruin that had once been a king's palace. She stopped in a kind of dumb ecstasy, and Holroyd watched her with a smile. ' I did not say too much, did I ? Isn't it a real Arcadia ? I defy any one to come here for a spell and not be the better for it.' ' Is that the little church where you told me you go every morning ? ' ' Yes ; you will come there with me to-morrow, won't you ?