A Life in a Love. A novel

Chapter I

" Lady Louisa Russell and Mr. Russell request the honour of Mrs. and the Misses Lindsay's company on the evening of Wednesday, the 18th Aprd, eight o'clock." So ran, if my memory fails me not, it is forty years ago, the invitation card — gdded and embossed, as was the fashion of the time — which my mother held in her hand, and gazed on with a wistful, pensive air. " I am sure," she said, " I don't know how this invitation comes to us ; this ball is to be quite an electioneering affair, to flatter the county bourgeoisie out of their VOL. I. b votes for young Mr. Russell, who stands for the county in a few weeks. But as I have no vote, and no interest with any voters, I don't know why they should ask me or my girls, unless — " and she glanced at my sister Mabel with the unspoken thought, so natural in a mother, so ridiculous to a woman of the world, that her daughter's beauty made the Lady Louisa Russell anxious to secure her as the star of the projected fete.

" It doesn't matter why we are asked," said Mabel, " I am very glad the invitation has come, however we came by it. I do so long to see a real ball, not the stupid carpet quadrilles they are so fond of at Stanton Lacy, where one always sees the same people, and dances with the same partners, who, I verily believe, wear always the same waistcoats and the same gloves. I declare that white sdk waistcoat of Harry Jukes' had been turned for the last party at Miss Atkyns !" "You must not laugh at Harry's waistcoat, my love," said mamma, a little timidly, "for fear he may return the sarcasm at Penrhyn Court, for I cannot get you new dresses to go there." Mabel's countenance fell. " Do you mean to say that we are to wear those dowdy white muslins, that we had for Miss Atkyns' Twelfth-night party? Then you may just decline the invitation at once ; for I, for one, shall certainly not go."

" I am so sorry," said poor mamma, with a sigh. And she was very sorry. She had so long and so often regretted that her slender income retained her in the obscure village of Stanton Lacy, where her girls had no opportunity of being seen by any one higher in rank or fortune, than here and there a young curate " reading for a title," or Dr. Coflyns' pupils, of whom the eldest was seldom much past eighteen, or Harry Jukes, the lawyer's clerk. She was fully persuaded that Mabel had but to show herself in the grand world of rank and fashion, to have earls and marquises at her feet. But how was she to gain B admittance into that world on an income of three hundred a year ? And although an electioneering bad was not exactly the portal, not even the ante-chamber by which that brilliant world is entered, httle better, indeed, than a dance in the servants' hall of the stately palace ; some lounger of the upper regions might condescendingly look in upon those humbler revels, and attracted by Mabel's surpassing charms, might hold forth a coronet and a wedding-ring, bidding her " come up hither."

Some such fairy dream had flitted through Mrs. Lindsay's imagination, as she mused over that embossed and gilded card ; no wonder that at Mabel's stern rejection of the profferred pleasure, she turned from her cloud-built castles with a sigh ! " Dear child," she pleaded, after a moment's silence, " I don't see why you cannot wear those dresses. I am sure you looked sweetly pretty in them, whenever you have worn them, and you have only worn them three times." " They are vdely made," pouted Mabel. " They can be altered." "Possibly, for the worse, and that is barely possible ; they are tumbled, too." " They can be ironed." " Yes, and made as yellow as nankeen." " But, my darling, you were quite satisfied with them until now." " Oh, they do well enough for Stanton Lacy, but certainly not for Penrhyn Court.

I do think, mamma, that if we are so poor, you might stretch a point rather than debar us of a pleasure that we may never have again." And poor Mabel's assumed stoicism gave way, and her beautiful eyes filled with tears. She was but eighteen ! " But, my pet, I ready have not the money this quarter. I have already an ticipated Dr. Buchanan's next payment for Harold, although I am always ashamed of accepting it ; it is so much too hberal, I always feel as if it were only a more dehcate way of receiving charity." " Oh, very well, if you haven't the money, we may as well drop the subject." " Mamma," I inquired timidly, " could you not afford one new dress ? it is not necessary that we should be always dressed alike, Mabel is so much younger than I am, and my mushn is in much better order than hers, I never dance so often ; could you not afford a new dress for her?"

The gratification of Mabel's every ca price or whim had been so constantly the law of our httle household, that she was habitually, alas, fatady, self-indulged ; but she was not of a selfish nature, and although my proposal was made in perfect simphcity and good faith, it shamed her at once out of her fit of sullens. "No, Edith," she cried, "we will go alike, if we go at all, and, perhaps, those muslins may do with some fresh ribbons ; only, mamma, as you say, I can't laugh any more at Harry's waistcoat. By-the-bye, I wonder, is Harold asked ?" " Didn't he tell you ? he was asked a fortnight ago, our invitation is quite an after-thought." O " Harold, has got no political influence either ?" " No, but he is acquainted with young Mr. Russell. He met him last winter in Paris, with Madame du Vernay Buchanan, as they call her, and took quite a fancy to him.

He has been asked more than once to Penrhyn Court, but he is a little sensi tive, you know, on the score of his birth, and is shy of any one who seems to wish to patronise him." " Patronise him !" I laughed. " It would be difficult for any one to patronise Harold Maynard." "What of Harold Maynard?" said a blythe young voice at the door, and a striking-looking youth of seventeen bounded into the room. " Girls, are you quarrelling for Harold ? Here he stands to make good his own cause against all lying and slandering. Speak out now, or for ever hold your peace, which, for such a pair of chattering jays, would be equiva lent to a doom of utter extinction." Reader, allow me to introduce to you my cousin Harold Maynard, and when I am about it, I may as well introduce to you the whole family group at the same time.

" What do you think of this work of Bishop Colenso's, ma'am ?" said a httle grocer, the other day, to a lady in my hearing. " I trust, Mr. Evans," replied his cus tomer, " that it has not staggered you in your earher faith ?" " Wed, ma'am," herephed, " before I can give an opinion, I must know something of the Bishop's antecedents !" Whether a knowledge of a bishop's antecedents be, or be not, a requisite preliminary to the right understanding of episcopal teaching, I leave to abler theologians than myself to decide ; but it is, I believe, generally admitted, that for the better comprehension of the incidents of a story, it is desirable to be told some thing of the " antecedents" of its princi pal personages. So, in nursery phrase, I wdl " begin at the beginning." We were but two, Mabel and I; our mother was the daughter of an Irish officer in a " marching regiment," and had been early left an orphan, dependant on the charity of some rather distant relatives for even the shelter of a home.

That shelter, however, had been frankly and readdy given her. Childless them selves, they received their young cousin with cordial hospitality, and proud of her extreme beauty, looked forward to a time when her union with some titled lover would add fresh lustre to the somewhat decaying glories of the family name. Years fled by, however, without bringing any realisation of these hopes. Honor O'Brien was beautiful, but she was por tionless, and the poor noblemen she occasionady met at the mimic drawing rooms of " the Castle" were too needy themselves, with encumbered estates and embarrassed rent-rods, to be able to dream of such a luxury as a bride who had no dower but her charms. And so, after refusing several offers from gentlemen of humbler position, as being quite beneath her claims, Honor found herself at thirty three still unmarried; often echpsed by belles who, with less actual beauty, could boast a fresher youth, and with no brighter prospect than that of sharing the bounty of her relations during their life, and of getting her living as she best could after their death.

At this juncture, she met my father, then a banker in Liverpool, a Scotchman of good family, and reputed wealth ; and an offer, which a few years earlier, she would have disdainfully re jected, she was now fain to accept without any demur. The marriage, I believe, was not an unhappy one, unsuited as my parents might have seemed for each other. My father,, reserved in habits and intellectual in his tastes, found httle sympathy in his wife, who had been accustomed to the somewhat pinchbeck ghtter of Irish " high life," and who had been educated in frivolous tastes and superficial accomplish ments. Yet she made him a faithful and attentive wife, presiding with grace at his table and with prudence over his house hold ; and if she never professed any great ardour of attachment for him, she at least always treated him with deference and respect.

They had several children, of whom, I, Edith, was the eldest, and Mabel the last. The three intermediate ones had ad perished in successive stages of infancy, and I was seven, Mabel two years old, when our father died very suddenly of spasm of the heart. My mother had not time to rally from the blow, which she felt very acutely, when it was followed by the crash of the banking firm, of which Mr. Lindsay had been a principal partner; and his widow found herself reduced from a condition of opulence and luxury to one of comparative poverty. She had a smad sum secured to her by her marriage settlement, and with this she retired to the httle vidage of Stanton Lacy, in one of the north-eastern counties, to eke out her slender resources in retirement. Accustomed, as she had been, to a life of pleasure and excitement, the change might have passed too heavily on her, had she not found consolation and support in her devotion to her youngest child.

I scarcely know why it was that I never held a very marked place in my mother's affections. Partly, perhaps, because I bore but httle of the resemblance to her own kindred, that she was proud to point out in Mabel. Perhaps, because I had always been healthy, and her anxious and fruitless solicitude for my three sisters who died had left her no leisure to think of me, who did not require much care. But, chiefly, I think, her comparative indifference to me had its source in a quality of mind, that phrenologists cad " concentrativeness," a quality which in a greater or less degree has been shared by all her descendants, and which has made us peculiarly tenacious in our attach ments, and proportionately unwilling, or unable to extend them beyond a very limited sphere. My mother's was pecu- A LTFE IN A LOVE. harly limited, for she seemed to have no eyes, no thought, no heart, almost for anyone but Mabel.

She was the idol to whom, at best, I could be but a ministering priestess. And I was con tent that it should be so. My beautiful sister had no more obsequious worshipper than myself. I was so accustomed to see her slightest fancies more consulted than my gravest wishes, that I grew at last to acquiesce in it as a natural rule, and in after hfe I had reason to feel most thankful for a discipline that had thus early taken me out of myself, and habituated me to find my chief happiness rather in giving, than in receiving, love. When my mother had resided a few years at Stanton Lacy, she received a proposal that promised to add something to her straitened means ; not a proposal of marriage, although it came from a bachelor. Doctor, or, as he preferred to be called, Professor Buchanan, was a cousin of my father's, a man of some eminence in hterary and scientific circles, both in Paris and in Edinburgh.

He had resided for some years in India, employed on the medical staff at Bombay, when he became un expectedly possessed of a handsome fortune, by the accidental death of a young nephew whom he never could have reckoned upon surviving. On his acces sion to wealth, he returned to his native Scotland, but he did not return alone. He was accompanied, by a fine boy of eight years old, whom he called Harold Maynard, though he was at no pains to conceal that the child's true relationship to him might have warranted him in giving him his own name. Morality, in those days, was at a low ebb in our colonies, and Professor Buchanan had neither the purity of life, nor the elevation of faith of his Covenanting an cestors. On returning, so accompanied, to his native land, he was, however, but coldly received in domestic circles ; and found that wealth could not secure for his son the respect and consideration readily accorded to an assured position, and unblemished birth.

Like many infidels, too, he was dissatisfied with his own infidelity, and not unwilling that his child should be reared in the most rigid princi ples of the faith which he had himself abjured. Within a few miles of Stanton Lacy, there lived an old codege friend of Doctor Buchanan's, named Collyns, an accom plished scholar, and a man of sincere and unostentatious piety. He held a small living in our neighbourhood ; but a chronic disease of the throat had for some years disabled him from the duties of the pulpit and the reading-desk, and leaving them to a curate, he had devoted himself with much success to the education and training of a few youths for the pubhc schools or universities. Upon hearing of my mother's altered circumstances, and her vicinity to his old friend, Doctor Collyns, Professor Bu chanan wrote to her, entreating her to take charge of the young Harold, and to suffer him to claim his relationship to her children, and to regard their home as his own, at least, until the term of his studies with Doctor Collyns should be completed, and enforcing his request with an offer of remuneration, very dehcately, but very explicitly and distinctly worded.

The terms offered by the Professor for the board, &c, of his son, would have been extravagant for a boy of that age, had he not felt it desirable, by extreme liberality, to overpower my mother's possible hesitation. And she did hesitate. She had the true Irish dislike to illegitimacy, and a rather more unreasonable prejudice against what she called "taking a boarder." But " money and fair words" are powerful with most people, and Doctor Buchanan was lavish of both. And so the matter was finally arranged, the young Maynard was admitted to the honour of makino one of our family circle, and to the privi lege of calhng us cousins, and my mother, " aunt." At first, she would enter a kind of protest against this familiarity, by sayinoto her intimates, Miss Atkyns and Miss Priscilla Atkyns. " Poor child, he may as well call me aunt, as anything else ; for you know he is not, even by blood, any relation whatever of mine !"

But gradually even this faint disclaimer ceased ; and by others, no less than by ourselves, it seemed, after awhile, almost forgotten that the tie between Harold and his cousins was indeed one of privilege, rather than of right. My mother, although invariably kind to the boy, devoted but little time or attention to him, she was so wrapped up in Mabel, so jealous of any possible intrusion on the affection that she considered exclusively her own, that I think she was rather pleased that, from the first, the young Maynard should evince a decided pre ference for me, rather than for the petted and spoiled beauty ; and that Mabel, resentful of the shght, should repay it by a lofty and disdainful surrender of all claim to the notice of such a tasteless c VOL. I. rebel. And so, by a tacit convention, my cousin Harold belonged to me.

I was the chosen confidante of his childish joys and griefs, the partner often of his boyish sports and studies. He was cordially affectionate to my mother, saucy and playful with Mabel, but only to me was he all himself. Only to me, in rare seasons of intimate commu nion, would he pour out ad the highest aspirations of a noble intedect, all the deeper yearnings of a loyal and most loving heart. And thus there grew between us an attachment as close, and as pure, as that of the fondest brother and sister. An attachment that has never been chilled by separation, never em bittered by jealousy, that sorrow could never ahenate, and which death itself has but enriched with a hoher hope. From the time that Doctor Buchanan had placed his son under my mother's care, he had taken up his residence in Paris, where his attainments had pro cured him a ready welcome into circles which would have been closed against the passport of mere wealth, and where these attainments won him the heart and hand of Madame la Comtesse du Vernay, the widow of a man of rank and fortune, and the mother of a son a few years older than Harold.

The Professor's marriage made no al teration in our previous arrangements. Both Madame du Vernay and the young- Count Adolphe had shown much kindness to his boy, and would gladly have received him as a son and brother, and for two or three months in every winter he joined •them in Paris, less, Doctor Buchanan said, for the indulgence of his parental feelings, than the youth should enjoy the advantages of polished and intellectual society, such as a retired country village could not offer. And so Hanold's education was stid conducted by Dr. Codyns, and his home continued to be with us, until he reached his sixteenth year, when (it being his wish to follow his father's profession) he was compelled to pass a much greater portion c of his time in Paris, in attendance on the medical and anatomical schools there, and, at the period at which my story commences, he was shortly to leave us altogether to prosecute his studies in Paris under his father's supervision.

And having thus hghtly sketched the " antecedents" of the little group in the parlour of Woodbine Cottage, I shall now, perhaps, be caded on to give some delineation of their outward semblance. My mother, I have already told you, had been beautiful in her youth, and still retained some vestiges of her early loveli ness, of which, however, she had trans mitted but a small portion to me. I resembled my father, she used to tell me ; and she would add, with a candour as little flattering to the living as to the dead. " Your poor papa was remarkably plain." Was I remarkably plain then ? Here before me, hes a miniature of Edith Lindsay at twenty-two, I gaze on it with a kind of wondering curiosity, so strange it seems to me that my mirror A LTFE IN A LOVE. 21 could ever have given me back such a reflection as that.

It was taken for Harold, as a birthday gift, and his descendants wid sometimes playfully contrast it with the now aged face, which they will tenderly declare is still fairer to them. No, it is not a plain face, the features are too delicate to be unpleasing, though not sufficiently regular to constitute any claim to beauty. The blue eyes are calm and soft. Perhaps if any man had awa kened the magic of love in those quiet eyes, he might have prized the beauty which he evoked there. But no one ever did. And had I been ten times fairer, my poor attractions must have been unnoticed beside those of Mabel — Mabel, the very loveliest woman I ever saw. She was a httle above the ordinary height of womanhood, " too tall" the ladies used to say, and some gentlemen, too ; par ticularly such as were the possessors of, or the aspirants to " pocket Venuses ;" but her figure was so exquisitely symmetrical, her every movement so instinct with grace and dignity, that the most preju diced condemner of " fine women" must have reversed his judgment, when he looked on her.

Her features had ad the perfection of a Grecian statue, and nearly all its immobility. In the rosy, curved lips, the delicate nostril, the softly rounded chin, there was no expression, but that of cold and proud repose. She looked like a goddess to be worshipped, rather than a woman to be wooed. And yet there was a languid dreaminess in those large grey eyes that seemed to droop beneath the weight of their long silken fringes, that might have betrayed, to a keen ob server, a capacity, hitherto unawakened and unsuspected, of feehng, of passion, and, alas, of suffering ! I tremble to draw Harold's portrait, I am so afraid that I cannot do it justice, and, indeed, my description of him must be as he was years later ; for at seventeen, although decidedly a hand some youth, the glorious beauty of his maturer manhood was as yet undeveloped.

I have said that my cousin was of Eastern birth, I cannot say precisely what was his native land, for Dr. Buchanan had travelled far and wide ; nor do I know to what race his mother belonged, but she must have been beautiful, for although in his character he inherited many of the moral and intellectual qualities of his Scottish ancestors, his physical formation owed little or nothing to them. Probably she had come of some of the mixed races, which are found in the European settle ments in Asia. Sometimes I have fancied that she might have been a Jewess, for although his complexion was dark as theirs upon whom " the sun hath looked," his features were bolder in outline than those of the Hindoo tribes, and had no trace whatever of African mould. From no servile race could Maynard have inherited that haughty pose of that graceful head, with its rich profusion of silky, waving (not curly) hair, nor the stately grace of his shght but tall and muscular figure.

His countenance, in repose, might almost have been called severe, so firm was the compression of the resolute mouth, so thoughtful and serious the large black eyes, bright and blacker than ever light up a European face — yet at the touch of some frolic fancy they would sparkle with a mischievous mirth and merriment, and the arch play fulness of his smile was only rivalled by its excessive sweetness. "An Apodo in bronze," that odious Madame Lamotte called him ; half in spite, T verily believe. She was more hke a Venus in brass, if indeed she could have been thought a Venus in any material. The world certainly said, that if Harold Maynard had been willing to play Apollo to her, she would not have fled from him, hke Daphne. Fie, Edith Lindsay ! you are getting ill-natured and scandalous — true woman that you are, some things you cannot forgive. Let us drop this subject, and return to the party at Woodbine Cottage.

Chapter II

" Dresses, indeed !" cried Harold, when Mabel, with more than usual animation, had avowed to him her reluctance to ap pear at Penrhyn Court in such " dowdy " apparel, as her thrice worn muslin. " Why Mabel, what is the use of being our Queen of Beauty, if you cannot assert your sovereignty without the royal purple ?" " I don't want them purple," answered the literal Mabel, " I only want them new and fashionable." " Ma belle, your charms wid be new at Penrhyn Court, and will make any attire you may choose to wear, fashionable. Ask Harry Jukes else. By the bye, you ought to be very gracious to Harry, for it was he who procured the invitation for you through Mr. Mansfield's interest as Mr. Bussed's agent." Mabel tossed her head contemptuously, and mamma laid down the card she stid held in her hand, as if its splendour were suddenly tarnished — while Harold, laughing, passed his arm in boyish fashion through mine, and drew me out into the garden, and through a little wicket gate that opened upon the banks of a quiet river, that flowed through the mea dows behind the house.

It was a bright, mild, April morning, and we wandered silently along the river path, until we came to a seat beneath some alders which Harold had built there for his own special delectation. I threw my self upon it, and looked up at him, as he stood, still silent, before me. " Now, cousin, tell me what you brought me here to tell ?" He smded. "You are a witch, Madam Edith; how could you guess that I had anything to tell?" "While you were joking with mamma and Mabel, there was a laugh in your voice that did not reach to your eyes. I know when that thoughtful, earnest look is in them, that something grave, perhaps sad, is masked behind your jest ing." "Yes, sad," he answered. "I had a letter from Adolphe du Vernay tins morn ing. Typhus fever is raging in Paris, and Madame du Vernay Buchanan is seriously ill.

My father's time is so occupied in attending her, that he could not write himself. Adolphe seems to be under grave apprehensions for his mother." " That is sad news, indeed. Doctor Buchanan and Madame are truly attached to one another." " I think so. I am sure of it ; but my sympathy is chiefly with Adolphe. He has the fondest affection for his mother." "And you, cousin, have a very true affection for Adolphe." "How could it be otherwise?" replied Maynard, "he has been so generous to me. He has wealth, and rank, and position in the highest Parisian circles, and he has always been ready to share those advan tages with me, as far as it is in his power to share them. Instead of resenting — as many would have done — the intrusion of a base-born stranger into his domestic relations, he has cordially extended those relations to me, who have nothing to give him in return but a brother's love.

And may God so deal with me," he said so lemnly, " if change, or trial, aye, or even crime, ever alienate from Adolphe du Vernay that brother's love." I knew the vow Harold thus made, would be kept, as it truly was, faith fully, and for ever. To the warmth of temperature that he inherited from his oriental descent, he united the energy and determination of his Scottish fore fathers, and a profound religious sensibility which, carefully fostered and judiciously directed by the preceptor his father had wisely chosen for him, remained through hfe the foundation of his character. The principle of Harold Maynard's calm sim plicity of purpose, and unfaltering energy of action, was the same that had made the strength of the heroes and prophets of Scripture records — a hving and reverent faith in a God who was not to be worshipped from afar, but to be sought and obeyed as ever present, ever near, ruhng and directing alike the highest aims, and the commonest duties of individual or social hfe.

" Monsieur du Vernay," I said, " be lieves in you, cousin ; and one day that faith of his will be justified. You have your place to make in the world, but I feel sure, that, gifted as you are, it will be a high one." " I can never have a place in the world," he answered, "not, at least, in Adolphe's social world. I have not even a rio-ht to the name I bear. I can scarcely bestow it, without a falsehood, on the wife I may choose, or the children she may bring me. I cannot even advance any claim to a parent's love without proclaim ing that parent's sin." "I did not think you felt that so bitterly." "Not bitterly, dear. I hope not bitterly. I recognise in the laws of society the higher authority of God; the reproach of idegitimacy is the world's witness for the consecration of love in marriage.

I do not murmur at that reproach, which, indeed, presses less heavily on me than on many similarly situated." "I do not see that it presses at all, so far. You are acknowledged by Doctor Buchanan, and treated by his wife and her son as a son and brother. We, your cousins, love you, and are proud of you. What more would you have ?" " No more at ad. I have no right to so much, and I think, Edith, that I have determined on my place in the world — the world, I mean, not of wealth or fashion, but of mortal suffering bodies, and of darkened but immortal souls." " And that place—?" "Is among the pioneers of science and civilization. There are men, who, to advance these, have nobly resigned the dearest ties of home and country. Who so fit as I to join their ranks? Isolated from these sacred bonds, I will find my consolation in teaching their soundness and dearness to those who are yet ignorant of their highest con secration."