Rose Turquand

Chapter I

CHAPTER I. THE

breakfast bell had rung, and the master and mistress of the house had already taken their seat at either end of the long breakfast-table. It was a London winter's morning, and there was the usual thick, bilious-looking atmosphere which does duty in the English metropolis for the whole some rain-washed morning blue of the country ; while a few sickly sunbeams were in vain trying to make their way through the nauseous mixture, half strangled in the effort. But whatever might be the gloom without, it rather added than not to the air of unmistakable English comfort of the large dining-room within, rich with crimson and oak, and filled with a low VOL. I. B splendour of firelight that ran in little rills of flame down the silver tea-urn, and laughed and sparkled on the bright china and plate laid out along the well-appointed table for a large family party.

Mrs. Adair, the lady who sat at the head of the table, industriously knitting a grey stocking as she waited for the rest of the party to assemble, was a tall, well-made woman, sufficiently inclined to embonpoint to give a certain massive repose to her figure. She would have been remarkably handsome, but for her large rather prominent grey eyes, and an indescribable air of hardness which beset her well-cut features and grandiose form. One would as soon have thought of pillowing one's aching head on her ample, well-rounded bosom as on the bronzen breast of a statue of Victory in a public square. Instinct ively one could not help wondering whether she had ever shared in the ordinary weak beginnings of human kind, whether she ever could have been a tender, helpless babe, or had not rather been cast life-size from the first.

Certain it is she had never known the common illnesses and frailties of human flesh. She had never taken a pill in her life, she would have scorned such a concession to the weak ness of mortality. Sickness of any kind in her eyes was not so much a misfortune as a disgrace, to be summed up in the convenient formulary of 'So-and- So's fancies,' and a thing to be heartily ashamed of as the result of giving way, and weakly refusing to exert oneself. Every one could help being ill if they liked, except old people going to die, and those who were born sickly ; and these last she would have quietly disposed of, as a mercy both to themselves and to the living. Gifted with an iron will in an iron frame, she ruled every one who came near her, and no one dared to disobey her. Opposite her, leisurely engaged in perusing a heap of letters that lay by the side of his plate, sat her lord and master, in the euphonistic but somewhat fictional language of domestic life. ' 'An two ride a horse, one must ride behind.' says Dogberry, despite some modern theories to the contrary ; and I have my suspicions that in this case, as in many others, it was Mr. Charles Adair, M.P., that meekly took the hinder seat in the pillion of married life.

His was one of those good-looking, common-place B faces, which cannot be recalled for two minutes together, but exist as a featureless blot in the memory ; yet, on closer inspection, there was a wild indecision lurking in the corners of the eyes as well as in the loose flexible mouth, which boded ill for his remaining master of the situation in any domestic difference of opinion with his wife. He was univer sally congratulated on having such a woman, — con gratulations, however, which from his bachelor friends were accompanied with an imperceptible shrug of the shoulders — such a devoted mother to his children, such an admirable manager, such a capital hand at giving the most recherches dinners, to the satisfaction of the most fastidious epicures, never in trouble with her servants as other women are, never bother ing his heart out with domestic squabbles, the strong capable woman taking up silently her share of the burden of life, and never being guilty of the weakness of thinking or complaining outside her head as so many women do.

But though he thoroughly recognised all her good qualities and, good easy man that he was, hugged the peace and order of his household, yet if the truth be known, I am not sure whether hard pressed he would not have made the same confession as once escaped the lips of a well-known character in one of the Universities with regard to his better half — 'Yes, she makes me an admirable wife, never keeps me waiting for my meals, always sees to their being well-cooked, keeps the house in the best order, and is a capital manager, but yet I can't say she is a woman I ever liked.' Indeed, how Mr. and Mrs. Adair ever came to be bracketed together, — married, if it suggests any union of heart and soul, would be a misnomer, — was just one of those mysteries which beset the question of all beginnings in natural philosophy.

Yet there they were seated at either end of the family breakfast table, man and wife, getting on as comfort ably together as other married folk, and both of them inclined to get stout and personable on whatever woes they encountered in their earthly pilgrimage. If such were Mr. Adair's private relationships, his public career is more difficult precisely to define. As the owner of a large distillery, he was in receipt of a good income, which, however, he greatly diminished by unsuccessful speculations. Politically, he might be said to be an incarnation of the British principle of compromise on its least attractive side — not the compromise which springs from philosophical mo deration and dislike of the practical falsehood of extremes, but the compromise which arises from a dread of consequences.

Nominally, he was a Whig, that being the party in power, when he opened all the public-houses in the small town of N , and had the proud honour of being floated to his seat in the legislature on a flood of bad beer and balderdash, swallowed ad libitum by his grateful constituents. His favourite plan was to tinker away at evil results, and leave the evil cause ; his favourite rule to vote with large ma jorities ; his one aim to swim with the stream and yet not to shoot the rapid. For the rest he en joyed the reputation of being a kind-hearted and benevolent man, always ready to take the platform in religious meetings, held for the diffusion of know ledge and the lessening of drunkenness among the masses. He was just opening his third business letter, when a sudden babble of fresh voices, and a rush of young feet down the stairs was followed by a somewhat tumultuous entry of the young folk of the house.

How shall I describe the sudden bright effluence of youthful strength and glow and beauty with which they seemed to fill the room ? Fresh spring flowers, sun-steeped and sparkling with morning dew, thrown in at some prison window, — a sudden flood of low sunshine breaking in upon a storm roofed day when a thousand little throats burst into song among the rain - illumined leaves, — no, nothing can adequately express that living stream of young and radiant human life that came laugh ing and dancing into the room that dull January morning. There were five of them altogether, rising in steps one above the other, each one taller and stronger and more beautiful than the last, till one was instinctively reminded of the old jubilant magnificat of a parent's heart, ' Lo, children are an heritage from the Lord.

As the arrows are in the hand of the mighty man, so are the young children. Happy is the man that has his quiver full of them : he shall not be ashamed when he speaks with his enemies in the gate.' The two eldest, Arabella and Matilda, were twin girls of about fifteen, with their mother's regular features, with light expressionless blue eyes, and cheeks on which the delicious rose bloomed in per petual summer, and long golden hair streaming down below their waists, — that exquisite child's hair, almost pathetic in its beauty, with the daffodil gleam in it when caught by its sister sunbeams, before the storms of life have dashed its golden lustre. Not that these two young ladies were likely to know much of the storms of life. There was an air of indolent beauty and somewhat supercilious self-satisfaction about them which suggested their taking life easily, with narrow hearts and large bodies, the best possible conformation for success in the great struggle of existence.

Indeed, an ener getic young lady of their circle stated on one occa sion that she never met those two eldest Miss Adairs without a longing to punch them, a pugi listic emotion they were apt to inspire in plain active-minded girls of their own age. At the present moment they were being actively propelled in the rear by their youngest sister Har riett, commonly called Harry, a precocious dark-eyed brunette, with hair 'as black as ashbuds in the front of March,' who, not being nearly so handsome as her two elder sisters, made up for it by a certain brazen self-assertion, and an amount of 'fast go' in her, that made her her brother's chosen companion, from his favourite country amusement of hunting rats with a ferret, down to the milder London delights of squirting at the maids out of a back window, tormenting his tutor with ingenious applications of cobbler's wax to the bottom of his chair, and of chopped horsehair to his bed, and shooting with a catapult at stray cats.

To be sure no one would have given them credit for being particularly fond of one another, for they were always sparring and quarrelling ; but as in his most complimentary moments he would sometimes call her a regular brick, perhaps they were but the natural terms of affectionate brick-bats. This boy, an exceedingly handsome lad of thir teen, being the eldest male descendant of the house, was naturally the apple of his parents' eyes, and considered much too precious to trust to a public school. Or rather, if the truth must be told, the experiment had been tried, but owing, his mother said, to a weakness in one of his ancles, which made it unadvisable that he should join in athletic sports, he had been taken away. Some better in formed were inclined to think that the weakness was not merely physical ; and that owing to a dis graceful scrape the lad got into, and a good deal of weak lying to hide it, his father was advised to withdraw him.

Anyhow, it was decided for the present to educate him at home, and, accordingly, he made his entry with Georgy, the youngest four year old, riding pick-a-back, a spoilt, unruly little cub, whom he proceeded at once to shunt into his mother's lap. But as they took their seats round the table, having previously given a hasty morning peck rather than a kiss to the cheek of either parent, one did not wonder at the admiration their beauty every where excited, nor could one help thinking how good it would have been for that hard, proud woman, worshipping success in all its forms, wor shipping strength, beauty, cleverness, anything that could command the admiration of the world, to have had one or two sickly, plain children to nurse and to care for for their own sakes. ' Well, my dears,' said Mrs. Adair, as she pro ceeded to pour out the tea, 'how did your juvenile dance go off last night at the Lawsons?' ' O, mamma,' exclaimed Arabella, ' it was such a dull affair.

I am sure I didn 't enjoy myself one bit. And there was that absurd little Alice Lawson giving herself such airs, doing the honours, and asking every one whether they were engaged for the next dance. Why, she actually had the impudence to ask me whether I wanted a partner, as if I ever did want a partner!' she added, tossing back her long curls. ' Well, you see, Alice has the misfortune of being very plain, poor girl, so she does as she would be done by.' 'And how do you think, mamma, that great gawky, Copsy Lawson asked me to dance?' chimed in Matilda. ' He caught me in the ante-room, just as I was struggling out of my carriage boots, and he planted himself before me, with his legs very wide apart, and said in his great gruff voice, " Are you engaged for the first dance?" and when I said " No," he nodded his head darkly, like, like who was that man who nodded his head ? ' ' Lord Burleigh ; go it ! ' put in Harry. 'Well, like Lord Burleigh, and said, "Then you mind !

" and walked off. And I am sure I did mind when he would insist on depositing the weight of his lumpy person on my toes, it was like dancing with a what shall I say ? ' 'A sack of potatoes tied round one's waist,' again put in her livelier sister. ' And what do you think, mamma,' said Arabella. ' that rude little Lucy Lawson did ? No sooner had the music began, and old Sir Thomas Lawson was waving his bland old hands, saying, " Choose your partners, young ladies and gentlemen, choose your partners," than she rushed across the room, and seized hold of Gus, and shouted out so that every one heard, " I choose you, I choose you ! " ' ' And very good taste, too,' rejoined Gus, ' only a fellow doesn't like being potted the moment he gets into the room. But you girls are always digging like crows into one another.' ' You must remember, my dear, that other young people have not had your advantages, and you must learn to make allowances,' their mother remarked. admonishingly. ' Well, I think you are all very hard on the evening's entertainment,' struck in Harry, ' to be sure it was rather slow, but I had very good fun after all.' ' The grub was the worst part.' ' My dear boy,' interrupted his mother, ' I wish you would not use such expressions, do try and talk like a gentleman at my table.' 'Well, the tuck in, the blow out, the prog, the what you like.

I declare that trifle was nothing at all but old Lawson's shaving suds, carefully pre served, and sweetened with a little whitey brown/ 'You nasty boy! ' exclaimed Arabella and Matilda. 'And didn't that great big flunkey mount careful guard over what little there was ! But I and a lot of other fellows, we watched calves down stairs, and then we made a bolt, and didn't we walk into the provisions and the champagne ! Poor calves, I thought he would have bust up about the legs when he returned. His face and his facings were all dyed one crimson plush.' ' A pun ! a pun ! not allowed, against the laws ! ' they all shouted out together. The gay and noisy talk that was going on all round him effectually diverted attention from Mr. Adair, who was more than usually absorbed in his letters. No one noticed his sudden change of countenance as among the pile of letters he came upon one with a heavy black border and directed in a thin feminine handwriting ; nor did any one remark how very red his face got after he had broken the black seal, and read over its contents ; and even seemed, by the quick movement of his small eyelids as he hastily gulped down some coffee, to be trying to wink away some fast gathering tears.

No one noticed it but the youngest child. one of those ' enfants terribles ' who was always noticing in a hopelessly public manner what other people wished to pass unnoticed. On the present occasion levelling his fat fore finger at his father he exclaimed, ' Look, mamma ! papa has burned himself. Naughty papa to drink his coffee too hot ! ' a remark which directing the eyes of the whole family upon him, naturally did not tend to lighten Mr. Adair's complexion as he hastily doubled up the letter and thrust it into his waistcoat pocket, a movement not I fancy alto gether lost on those large, colourless, grey eyes of his wife's. At least she did not seem altogether sur prised when as soon as breakfast was over, and the children were leaving the room, he said, after fidgetting about, and poking the fire once or twice, ' My dear, could you spare a few minutes from your housekeeping and the children to talk over a little matter with me in my study?' 'Certainly, I will join you in five minutes.' Some people's five minutes are very long ; but Mrs. Adair's were always ticked off accurately by the clock ; and she made her appearance in her husband's study to the moment.

He was standing with one arm resting on the mantel-piece, lost in sad thought. Mrs. Adair took her seat opposite him, took up the inevitable knitting, and having disentangled the thread, she lifted a stony gaze to her husband's face, and acquitted herself of the single monosyllable 'Well?' To a man originally wanting in moral courage, and needing to be largely helped out in his con fidences, it certainly was not encouraging. So in stinctively averting his face, and leaning his head sadly against the cold marble, he said, ' I have heard this morning of poor Bessie's death.' Mrs. Adair's whole face suddenly lighted up ; ' Your sister dead ? ' she exclaimed, ' that poor, un fortunate, disgraced creature dead? What a merciful Providence ! I have always prayed she might never turn up to disgrace the children, and now God has heard my prayers.' The words jarred inexpressibly on her husband, and he said bitterly, ' Perhaps other people may not consider it such a very merciful Providence to lose an only sister.' ' Now, Charles, that is nonsense I cannot stand.

You know she has been nothing but a trouble and a disgrace to you whilst she lived, and now that Providence has mercifully removed her you are going to do the sentimental over her. But that is just like you. You leave me all the care and re sponsibility of the children, and you don't care what disgrace your relations bring upon them, you only think of yourself.' ' Only a disgrace and trouble to him as long as she lived ! ' and he had been going over the old days in his memory, the old days when as a boy he had been so proud and fond of his little sister. A strange, unhappy childhood those two had had, living alone in the solitary moorland house with their widowed father, the hard, lonely man whose whole heart seemed only to harden into greater bitterness at the sight of his motherless children, and who left his boy entirely to the management of a crabbed old butler, with but one idea of bringing up a boy, which was emphatically not to spare the rod.

Every detail of the vexatious tyranny to which he was subjected seemed to rise up before him, the cuffs, the constant beating, even down to the way he was always made to say his grace, ' For what we are going to receive the Lord make us thankful,' before a dose of rhubarb or castor oil ; and he remembered how his little sister Bessie was then his only joy, and had kept his heart a fountain of sweet thoughts, which without her would have dried up and hardened into a stone ; how when she was quite little he used to carry her cuddled up in his arms, and ' flushing like a daisy into rosy sleep,' far away into the deep woods to gather primroses and violets or to hunt for wild strawberries ; and how as she grew older, she had many a time saved him from a beating by twining her lithe body so closely and fondly about him, regardless of the risk she VOL. I. C ran, so that it was impossible to hit him without hitting her, and equally impossible to loosen her passionate embrace and get her away.

Poor Bessie ! when in after years her brother went to college, and in the rebound from the stern restrictions of his boyhood, fell into a wild dissolute life which he could no longer share with her, was it any wonder in the hard, lonely monotony of her life, that she fell in love with an interesting-looking dark-eyed stranger, whom she was constantly meeting in her long solitary walks ? and only after she was engaged to him, discovered that he was a French actor, who was trying the bracing air of the moors for the benefit of his voice. Was it any wonder that with nothing else to love he at last persuaded her to elope with him ? going through the form, of marriage with her, in order to secure her mother's property which was settled on the girl, in the fervent hope that a little transaction of the same kind that he had gone through in France might not turn up against him.

A lawsuit, in which some technical flaw in the will was discovered, after dragging on for some years, defeated Louis Tur quand in his aim, and left him in possession of a penniless young wife whom he loathed as an un successful speculation. At the same time the pub licity of legal proceedings realised his worst fears, and his first wife prosecuted him for bigamy, forcing him to fly the country, soon after to end his worthless career at New York in a drunken brawl. The unfortunate girl he had betrayed followed him to Liverpool, only to see the vessel that bore him from her, gleaming white-winged in the distance. There in that great squalid city of the west, friend less and penniless she brought forth her first-born child, knowing that she was a mother and no wife. Her pride wholly broken down in that moment of supreme anguish, then it was that she wrote to her brother, stating that she was destitute and alone ; and beseeching him to come to her help.

But for the same home-influence which had induced him to cut her since her marriage, he would have responded at once to her appeal ; as it was, fearing his wife's displeasure, he contented himself with sending her enough money to meet her simple wants, for the first few years very regularly, then when it got to his wife's knowledge very irregularly, till at last the re mittances had ceased altogether. C2 What struggles and difficulties and trials and temptations she had endured in her efforts to support her child during those last years of her life were known to none. He only knew from her last letter, that she had died in actual want. And now the bitter pain at his heart forced the words from his lips in a kind of cry of distress, ' O Cornelia, spare me your reproaches now, my own self-reproaches are bad enough to bear ; my poor Bessie died wanting the necessaries of life, and I never knew it.' There was a painful pause.

With most people knitting is a peaceful, soothing sort of occupation ; but with Mrs. Adair there was an angry click of the needles, and a forward thrust every now and then, which suggested stabbing an imaginary enemy. It irritated her husband almost without his know ing it. Suddenly she burst out, 'Yes, that is just what weak people do ; they go and yield to the first temptation that comes in their way, and bring disgrace on everyone belonging to them, and then think that the shoulders of everyone else were made on purpose to bear their burdens, and help them out of the consequences of their own folly ; and think themselves finely ill-used if they are allowed to reap what they have sown. Why, you were always send ing her money, money, I am sure, which was wanted badly enough for the education of the children.

But those weak incapable people always do go and die of want just to spite one.' ' Be comforted, my dear,' said her husband with a bitter sarcasm, ' at any rate she did not spite you out of the money. You are the richer by the few pounds which would have got my poor Bessie the necessaries of life on her dying bed.' ' There, now, that is just one of your nasty speeches. I - suppose the next thing will be that you will blame me, because your sister went and disgraced herself by committing bigamy with a low Frenchman, with half-a-dozen wives besides herself in his own country.' ' Nonsense, Cornelia ; but what I do say is, that you are cruelly hard on poor Bessie who was more sinned against than sinning.' ' O yes, that is the stock phrase for weak people who do wrong and get themselves into trouble,' his wife remarked with a sneer.

There was another pause interrupted only by the wrathful click of Mrs. Adair's needles. Both knew there was more to come. Both instinctively felt they were standing on the brink of a precipice. He shifted his attitude uneasily, drew a chair to the fire and sat down, then carefully dusting one of his chubby knees, he said with an air of elaborate unconcern, ' You know she has left a child ? ' 'Yes, I suppose like other illegitimate children it must go to the workhouse. The Almighty has so arranged it that the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children, and it's no use interfering with His laws.' It was Mrs. Adair's favourite text, and to her mind, presented no difficulties. ' Good God, Cornelia ! ' her husband exclaimed, getting fairly irritated, ' Have you no pity ? Have you no heart?

What if one of your children were left alone in the world, and another were to show as little pity as you show, and let your child go to the workhouse?' Mrs. Adair lifted her colourless grey eyes to her husband's face and said coldly, 'Will you please to remember of whom you are speaking? My children's mother, thank God, has never done wrong, therefore I think I need not contemplate any of them in that position.' ' Well, all I can say is, I'll die first before my sister's orphan girl shall go to the workhouse.' 'Very well, then,' his wife replied with a cold shrug of her shoulders, ' I suppose more money must be drained from the children's education, to provide the child with some school which will bring her up respectably as a lady's maid or nursery-governess. And just when those unfortunate speculations of yours, into which if you had taken my advice you never would have entered, have so impoverished us.

If there is one thing that does exasperate a man, it is to be reminded of his unfortunate speculations at the very moment when his temper is giving way. Mr. Adair sprang to his feet and exclaimed angrily, his irritation serving him for once in the place of moral courage, ' There, there, I do think you '11 drive me mad with your eternal bother about money. I'll tell you what, Cornelia — and the sooner you understand it the better — Bessie has left her orphan child in my care, and I intend to be a father to her, and mean her to be brought up, neither at a workhouse nor a school, but under my own roof and my own eye, and to share in all the advantages of the other children.' Mrs. Adair was aghast, for once the inevitable knitting fell dead all of a heap in her lap. She was a woman who never got red in the face, nor raised her voice in a passion ; on the whole she grew preternaturally, icily, calm, and in a voice that sifted through one like a little bitter east wind, she said, ' Do you mean to tell me to my face that you intend my children,' — she had a lofty way of ignoring Mr. Adair's share of bringing them into existence, — ' my children,' she repeated with emphasis, ' to as sociate with a French player's bastard, drawn from the gutter, and doubtless initiated in all the evil of the streets?' The last remnant of Mr. Adair's temper gave way.

He turned white with passion, sprang to his wife's side, and laying a heavy hand on her shoulder he said hoarsely, ' Cornelia, you are a bad hard woman, and you have tried to make me as hard and bad as yourself, but this time I am determined you shall fail. Twice you have hardened me against my own flesh, once against my darling sister, and once against my .' His voice choked and he turned away in some irrepressible emotion. Whatever there was in this allusion, whatever skeleton in the closet known only to themselves, the strong woman turned perfectly livid as the words passed his lips. For a moment she seemed to struggle for utterance ; and then she said in the same quiet icy tones, ' I think it is scarcely for you to reproach me with that. It was not my sin that was visited.' He seemed literally to writhe under her words, to be shaken from head to foot with some convulsion of pain.