A wonderful woman : a novel

Front matter

ii on deposit from Massey College cJUl'K.

POPULAR NOVELS.

By May Agnes rieming.

Contents

CHAPTER PAGB

I. — Katherine ^ 9

II. — Mrs. Vavasor. ... 22

PART II. I. — La Reine Blanche 207

III. — Sir Arthur Tregenna 235

IV. — At Scars wood 240

• V. — " Once more the Gate behind me falls" 253

VI. — Something very strange 262

VII. — '* There is many a Slip," etc 272

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER PAG^

VIII.— Redmond O'Donnell 282

IX. — Six Years before 292

X. — An Irisli Idyl 300

XI. — Its English Reading 314

XII.—" The Battle of Fontenoy " 326

XIII. — The Mystery of Bracken Hollow 337

XIV. — Under the King's Oak 353

XV.— " As in a Glass, darkly " , . . 362

XVI. — The Story of the Ivory Miniature 377

XVII.— The Scar on the Temple 391

XVIII.— Rose O'Donnell's Secret 403

XIX.— Knight and Page 416

XX.— A Dark Night's Work 432

XXI.— The Length of his Tether 437

XXII. — After the Masquerade 445

XXIII. — «* Six Years too Late" 457

XXIV. — A Chapter of Wonders. 474

XXV.— The Last Link 487

XXVI.— Hunted Down 497

XXVIL— That Night 509

XXVIII.—" Not I, but Fate, hath dealt this Blow" 524

XXIX.— How it ended 533

A WONDERFUL WOMAN.

Chapter 1. Katherine

HE large, loud-voiced clock over the stables struck nine, and announced to all whom it might concern that the breakfast-hour of Sir John Dangerfield, Baronet, of ScarsAVOod Park, Sussex, had arrived. Scarswood Park ! A glorious old place, lying deep down in the green heart of a Sussex v/oodland ! A glorious old place, where the rare red deer disported amid the emerald glades'j and dusky, leafy aisles of tlie oak and beech ! A vast and stately park, sloping down to the tawny sea-shore, and a vast and stately mansion, its echoing turrets rising high above the towering oak and copper beeches, and its eastern windows sparkling in the red sunhght of this bright September morning like sparks of fire !

Within and without the great house was very still ; a breakfast-table, sparkling with crystal, rich with rough old silver, gay with tall glasses of September roses, and snowy with napery, stood ready and waiting in a spacious room.

Through the open windows the sweet, hay-scented morning wind blew, and far off you caught in the summer stillness the soft wash of the waves on the yellow sands, more than a mile away.

At tlie last chime of the loud-voiced clock the door opened, and Sir John Dangerfield came into the room. A silver-toned French time-piece on the marble mantel began a tinkling waltz, preparatory to repeating the hour ; the birds, in their gilded cages, sang bUthely their welcome ; but the baronet glanced impatiently around in search of something or somebody else.

"Not down yet," he said. "That's not like Katherine ! 1* lO

KATHERINE.

She is not used to dissipation, and I suppose last night's concert has made her lazy this morning. Thomas," — to a footman, appearing like a tall plush specter in the doorway — "tell Miss Katherine's maid that I am waiting breakfast. Has the Ti7nes arrived ? "

" Yes, Sir John."

Thomas presented the folded Thunderer to his master, and vanished.

Sir John Dangerfield flung himself into an easy-chair, that groaned in every joint with his three hundred pounds of manhood, and opened the damp London paper, perfuming the room with the smell of printers' ink. He was a tall, portly gentleman, this Sussex baronet, with a handsome, florid face, and an upright, mihtary bearing. For three months only had he reigned master of Scarswood ; three lives had stood between him and the baronetcy, and, a colonel in the Honorable East India Company's Service, he had, four months before this sunny September morning, about as much idea of ever lording it in Scarswood Hall as he had of ever sitting on the throne of England. Suddenly, and as if a fatality v/ere at work, these three lives had been removed, and Colonel Dangerfield, of her Majesty's H. E. r. C. S., became Sir John Dangerfield, of Scarswood Park, and, with his daughter and heiress, came back to England for the first time in fifteen years. He was a widower, and Miss Dangerfield, his daughter, his heiress, his idol, had been born in England, and was two years old when her father had first gone out to India, and grown up to be nearly seventeen before she ever set foot upon English soil again.

He unfolded his paper, but he did not read. The loud singing of the birds, the dazzling brightness of the summer morning, disturbed him, perhaps. It dropped on liis knee, and his eyes turned on the emerald lawn, on the tangled depths of fern and bracken, on the dark expanse of waving woodland — terrace, lawn, and coppice, all bathed in the glorious golden light.

" A fair prospect," he said — " a princely inheritance ! And to think that four months ago I was grilling alive in Calcutta, with no earthly hope but that of retiring one day from the Company's service v/ith chronic liver complaint, and a colonel's half-pay. For myself it would not matter : but for Katherine ! " His face changed suddenly. If I only could be certain she were dead ! If I only could be certain my secret was buried with her ! It never mattered before — we were out of her reach ; but since my accession to Scarswood, since my return to Eng-

KATHERINE.

II land, that wretch's memory has haunted me Uke an evil spirit. Only last night I dreamed of her — dreamed I saw her evil black eyes gleaming upon me in this room. Paugh ! "

A shudder of disgust — a look of abhorrence ; then he lifted the paper again — and again he dropped it.

A door far above closed Avith a bang ; a fresh young voice caroling like a' bird ; the quick patter, patter, patter, of little female feet downstairs — the last three cleared with a jump ; and then the door of the breakfast-room was flung wide, and the heiress of Scarswood Park flashed into the room.

Flashed — I use the word advisedly — flashed in like a burst of sunshine — like a hillside breeze — and stood before her father in fluttering white muslin, pink ribbons waving, brown hair flying, gray eyes dancing, and her fresh, sv/eet voice ringing through the room.

Good morning, papa ! " Miss Dangerfield cried, panting, and out of breath. " Is breakfast ready ? I'm perfectly famished, and would have starved to death in bed if Ninon had not come and routed me out. And how \^ your appetite, papa? — and I hope I have not kept you waiting too long — and, oh ! wasn't the concert perfectly de — licious last night !"

And then two white arms went impetuously around the neck of the Indian officer, and two fresh rosy lips gave him a kiss that exploded like a torpedo.

Sir John disengaged himself laughingly from this impulsive embrace.

Gently, gently, Kathie ! don't quite garrote me with those long arms of yours. Stand off and let me see how you look after last night's dissipa^tion. A perfect wreck, I'll be bound."

"Dissipation ! A perfect wreck ! Oh, papa, it was heavenly — ^just that ! I shall never forget that tenor singer — who sang Fortunio's song, you know, papa, with his splendid eyes, and the face of a Greek god. And his name — Gaston Dantree — beautiful as himself. Don't talk to me of dissipation and a wreck ; I mean to go again to-night, and to-morrow night, and all the to-morrow nights while those concerts are given by the Talbots."

She stood before him, gesticulating rapidly, with the golden morning light pouring full on her face.

And Miss Katherine Dangerfield, heiress and heroine, was beautiful, you say, as an heiress and heroine should be ? I am sorry to say No. The young ladies of the neighborhood, otherwise English misses with pink and white complexions, and per-

KA THERINE.

feet manners; would have told you Katherine Dangerfield was lanky and overgrown, had sunburnt hands and complexion, too small a nose, and too large a mouth and chin. Would have told you her forehead was low, her complexion sallow, and her manners perfectly horrible. She was boisterous, she was a hoyden, she said whatever came uppermost in her mind, was utterly spoiled by a doting father, and had the temper of a very termagant. They would probably have forgotten to mention— those young ladies — that the sallow complexion was lit by a pair of loveliest dark-gray eyes, that the tall, supple figure of the girl of seventeen gave rare promise of statelv and majestic womanhood, that the ever-ready smile, which parted the rosy lips, displayed a set of teeth flashing like jewels. '

They would have forgotten to mention the wonderful fall of bright brown hair, dark in the shadow, red gold in the light, and the sweet freshness of a voice so silver-toned that all who heard it paused to hsten. Not handsome — you would never have called her that — but bright, bright and blithe as the summer sunshine itself

''Well, papa, and how do I look? Not very much uglier than usual, I hope. Oh, papa," the girl cried, suddenly, clasping her hands, "why, why, why wasn't I born handsome ? I adore beauty — pictures, music, sunshine, flowers, and — handsome men ! I hate women — I hate girls — vain, malipious magpies— spiteful and spiritless. Why don't I look like you, papa, — you handsome, splendid old soldier ! Wliy was I ^orn with a yellow skin, an angular figure, and more arms and hands than I ever know what to do with ? Whom do I take after to be so ugly, papa? Not after you, that's clear. Then it must be after mamma?"

Miss Dangerfield had danced over to the great mirror on the mantel, and stood gazing discontentedly at her own image in the glass.

Sir John, in his sunny window-seat, had been listening with an indulgent smile, folding his crackling paper. The crackling suddenly ceased at his daughter's last words, the smile died wholly away.

" Say, papa," Katherine cried, impatiently, " do I look like mamma ? I never saw her, you know, nor her picture, nor anything. If I do, you couldn't have been over and above particular during the period of love's young dream. Do I inherit my tawny complexion, and square chin, and snub nose, and low forehead from the late Mrs. Colonel Dangerfield ? "

KATHERINE.

Her father laid down his paper, and arose.

" Come to breakfast, Katherine," he said, more coldly than he had ever spoken to her before in his life, and be kind enough to drop the subject. Your flippant manner of speaking of — of your mother, is positively shocking. I am afraid it is true what they say of you here — Indian nurses — the lack of a mother's care — and my indulgence, have spoiled you."

" Very well, papa ; then the fault's yours and you shouldn't blame me. The what's-his-name cannot change his spots, and I can't change my irreverent nature any more than I can my looks. But really and truly, papa, do I look like mamma ? "

" No — yes — I don't know."

No — yes — I don't know. Intelligible, perhaps, but not at all satisfactory. When /am left a widow, I hope I shall remember how the dear departed partner of my existence looked, even after thirteen years. Have you no portrait of mamma, then ? "

" No ! In Heaven's name, Katherine, eat your breakfast, and let me eat mine ! "

" I am eating my breakfast," responded his daughter, testily.

I suppose a person can talk and eat at the same time. Haven't you rather got a pain in your temper this morning, papa ? And I must say I think it a little too hard that I can't be told v/ho I take my ugliness from. I'm much obliged to them for the inheritance, whoever they were."

Sir John again laid down his paper with a resigned sigh. He knew of old how useless it was to try and stem the torrent of his daughter's eloquence.

" What nonsense you talk, my dear," he said. " You're not ugly — you don't want your father to pay you compliments, do you, Katherine ? I thought your cousin Peter paid you enough, last night to satisfy even your vanity for a month."

Katherine shook her head impatiently until all its red-brown tresses flashed again.

" Peter Dangerfield — wretched little bore ! Yes, lie paid me compliments, with his hideous little weasen face close to my ear until I told him for goodness sa,ke to hold his tongue, and not drive me frantic with his idiotic remarks ! Pie let me alone after that, and sulked ! I tell you what it is, papa — if something is not done to prevent him, tha.t little grinning imbecile will be asking me to marry him one of these days — mark my woi ds ! "

" Very well — suppose he does ?" The baronet leaned back

/CATHERINE.

in his chair and raised his paper, nervously before his face. " Suppose he does, Kathie — what then ?"

"What then!" The young lady could but just repeat the words in her amaze and indignation. " What then ! Sir John Dangerheld — do you mean to insult me, 'sir ? Put down that paper this instant, and look the person you're talking to full in the face, and repeat ^ what tJien^ if you dare!"

" Well, Kathie," the baronet said, still hdgeting with his paper screen and not looking his excited litde commanding ofhcer in the face, " Peter's not handsome, I know, nor dashing, but he's a clever little fellow, and my nephew, and in love with you, -and will make you a much better husband, my dear, than a much better-looking man. Handsome men are always vain as peacocks, and so deeply in love with themselves that they never have room in their conceited hearts and empty heads to love any one else. Don't be romantic, my dear — you'll not find heroes anywhere nov/ except in Mudie's novels. Peter's a clever little fellow, as I said, and over head and ears in love with )^ou."

"A clever little fellow! A clever little fellow," repeated Miss Dangerfield, with intense concentrated scorn. "Papa," with dignity, " a few minutes ago you told me to change the subject. / make the same remark now. I wouldn't marry your clever little fellow not to save my own head from the gallows or his soul from perdition. Sir John, I consider myself doubly insulted this morning ! I don't wonder you sit there excruciating my nerves with that horrid rattling paper and ashamed to look me in the face. I think you have reason to be ashamed ! TeUing your only child and heiress she couldn't do better than throw herself away on a pitiful little country lawyer, only five feet high, and with the countenance of a rat. If it were that adorable Gaston Dan tree now. Oh, here's the post. Papa ! papa ! give me the key."

Miss Dangerfield forgetting in a second the late outrage offered her by her cruel parent seized the key, unlocked the bag, and plunged in after its contents.

" One — two — three — four ! two for me from India — one for you from ditto, in Major Trevanion's big slap-dash fist, and this — Why, papa, what lady correspondent can you have in Paris ? What an elegant Italian ha^nd ! what thick yellow perfumed paper, and what a sentimental seal and motto ! Blue wax and pensez a moi! Now, papa, who can this be from ? "

She threw the letter across the table. With her first words ^

KA THERINE.

the face of the Indian officer had changed — a hunted look of absolute terror had come into his face.

His hands tightened over the paper, his eyes fixed themselves upon the dainty missive his daughter held before them, his florid, healthful color faded — a dull grayish whiteness crept over his face from brow to chin.

" Papa ! " Katherine cried, you're sick, you're going to have a fit ! Don't tell me ! can't I see it ? Drink this — drink it this moment and come round ! "

She held a glass of water to his lips. He obeyed mechanically, and the color that had faded and fled, slowly crept back to his bearded, sun-browned face. "There !" said Miss Dangerfield, in a satisfied tone, "you have come round ! And now tell me, was it a fit, or was it the letter ? Tell me the truth, sir ; don't prevaricate ! "

" It was one of my old attacks, Kathie, nothing more. You ought to be used to them by this time. Nothing more, I give you my word. Go back to your breakfast, child," he said testily, "and don't stand staring there in that uncomfortable way !"

" My opinion is, papa," responded Miss Dangerfield, with gravity, " that you're in a bad way and should turn your attention immediately from the roast beef of old England to water gruel and weak tea. A fine old English gentleman of your time of day, who has left his liver behind him in India, and who has a Sepoy bullet lodged for life in his left lung, and a strong tendency to apoplexy besides, ought to mind what he eats and drinks, and be on very friendly terms with the nearest clergymen. Aren't you going to read that letter, papa, and tell me who the woman is who has the presumption to wTite to you without my knowledge ? Now where are you going ? " For Sir John had arisen hastily, his letters in his hand.

" To my study, Kathie. Finish your breakfast, darling, and don't mind me." He stooped down suddenly and kissed her, with almost passionate tenderness. " My darling ! my darling ! " he said. " Heaven bless and keep you always, whatever happens — whatever happens."

He repeated the last words with a sort of anguish in his voice, then turned and walked out of the breakfast parlor before his very much amazed daughter could speak.

" Well ! " exclaimed Miss Dangerfield at last, " tliis does cap the universe, doesn't it?" This question being addressed to vacancy received no reply. " There's a mystery here, and I don't like mysteries out of sensation novels. I have no secrets i6

KATHERINE.

from papa — what business has papa to have secrets from me ? "

She arose with an injured air, gave the bell a vicious pull, and walked in offended dignity back to her room. The broad, black, slippery oaken staircase went up in majestic sweeps to the regions above. Miss Dangerfield ascended it slowly and with a face of perplexed thought.

" It was never an attack — don't tell me — it was that nasty, vicious, spidery written little letter ! Now what woman wrote that letter, and what business had she to write it ? I shall insist upon papa giving me a full explanation at dinner-time. No woman in Paris or any other wicked city shall badger my precious old soldier into an early grave. And meantime I shall have a gallop on Ilderim over the golden Sussex downs."

She entered her room singing the song the handsome tenor had sung at the concert the night before, the melody of whose silver voice, the dusky fire of whose eyes, the dark foreign beauty of whose face, had haunted her romantic seventeen-yearold mind ever since.

Rispondia a cara a me ! "

How handsome he was, how handsome — how handsome ! If ever I marry, it shall be a man — a demi-god like that. Peter Dangerfield, indeed ! Nasty httle bore ! Still I would rather have him in love with me than have no one at all. I wonder if it is I, myself, he loves, or Scarswood Park, and the heiress of eight thousand a year. Ninon ! my green riding-habit, and tell them to fetch Ilderim around. And oh, Ninon, my child, tell that tiresome groom I ^(?;27 want him perambulating behind me, like an apoplectic shadow. Ilderim and I can take care of ourselves."

"But, mademoiselle — Seer John's orders — "

"Ninon Duclos, will you do as / order you? I won't have the groom — there ! I'm always shocking the resident gentry of this neighborhood, and I mean to go on shocking them. I feel as if I had a spy at my heels while that beef eating groom is there. Help me on with my habit and say no more about it."

Little Ninon knew a good deal better than to dispute Miss Dangerfield's mood when Miss Dangerfield spoke in that tone. Miss Dangerfield had boxed her ears before now, and was very capable of doing it again. Perhaps, on the whole, smart little Ninon rather liked having her cars impetuously slapped by her impulsive young mistress, and the tingling curecTj as it invariably was, by the present of Miss Katherine's second-best silk dress half-an-hour after.

Looking very briglit and dashing, if not in the least pretty, the heiress of Scarswood Park ran lightly down the slippery stairs, out of the vast vaulted hall, where statues gleamed and suits of mail worn by dead-and-gone Dangerfields centuries before, flashed back the sunshine. Her dark -green riding-habit fitted her, as Katherine herself said, as though she had been born in it," — the waving brightness of her brown hair was twined in thick plaits aronnd her graceful head, and her porkpie hat with its scarlet bird's-wing perched ever so little on one side, set off the piquante face beneath — a thoroughly English face, despite the golden hue of a tropic sun.

"I beg your parding, miss," Roberts, the butler, said, stepping forward. He was a dignified, elderly, clerical-looking personage, like an archbishop in silk stockings and knee breeches ; " but if you will hexcuse the remark, miss, I thinks as ow we're going to 'ave a storm. There's that closeness in the hair, miss, and that happearance in the hatmosphere that halways perceeds a thunder-storm ; if I might make so bold miss, I should hadvise you not to stay hout more than a hour, at the furthest."

" Good gracious, Roberts, what nonsense ! There's not a cloud in the sky. Oh, well ! that one ! why it's no bigger than my hand. I'm going to Castleford, and I don't believe in your thunder-storms."

" You'll catch it, though, for all that, my young lady," soliloquized Mr. Roberts, looking after the slight girlish figure as it dashed out of sight down the elm avenue mounted on a spirited black horse. " Great storms 'ave come from clouds no bigger than a man's 'and before now. But you're a young persing that won't be hadvised, and you'll come to grief one of these days through 'aving too much of your own way, as sure as my name's Roberts."

And then Mr. Roberts philosophically went back to the Castleford Chi^ofiicle, and never dreamed that he had uttered a prophecy.

Miss Dangerfield dashed away over the breezy Sussex downs — gold-green in the September sunshine. But the brilliance of that sunlight grew dim and dimmer with every passing moment, and looking up presently she saw that her " cloud no bigger than a man's hand" had spread and darkened, and was fast glooming over the whole sky. Old Roberts had been right then, i8

ICATHERINE.

after all ; and unless she stayed at Castleford, or turned back at once, she was in for a drenching.

" I won't turn back and I won!t stop at Castleford," the baronet's daughter said, setting her white teeth. "I'll get my books, and I'll go home, and Ilderim and I shall outstrip the lightning after all."

She dashed into the town. Castleford was a military depot, and knots of red-coated officers grouped here and there, lowered their crests, and gazed after her with admiring eyes as she flew

" Plucky girl that," said Captain Vere de Vere of the Plungers Purple to his friend Captain Howard of the Bobtails Blue. " Gad ! how squarely she sits her saddle. And what a waltzer she is — as graceful as a Parisienne ballerina, and as springy. Comfortable thing there waiting for some lucky beggar — clear eight thousand a year, and strictly entailed. Not a handsome girl, I admit, but what would you ? Doosidly clever, too, and thafs a drawback. I hate your clever, women — put a fellow out of countenance, by Jove ! Shouldn't know anything — women shouldn't, beyond the three great feminine arts, dancing, dressing, and looking pretty." With which terse summary of women duties the Honorable Plantagenet Vere de Vere lit his huge manilla and sauntered away. " She seemed uncommonly sweet on that foreigner, that Creole fellow — what's his name — at the concert last night," he thought. "It's always fellows like thatwith tenor voices and long eyelashes, that draw the matrimonial prizes. Heard her tell Edith Talbot last night all the offi, cers at Castleford had ginger whiskers, and knew no more how to waltz than so many lively young elephants."

Miss Dangerfield's errand was to a Castleford bookseller's, and her order was for all the newest novels. She came out presently, followed by the obsequious shopman carrying her parcel and bowing his thanks. The storm was very near now. The whole sky was dark — there was that oppressive heat and stillness in the air that usually precedes a thunder-storm.

" Coming ! " Miss Dangerfield thought, vaulting into her saddle. " Now then, Ilderim, my beauty, my darling, outstrip the storm if you can ! "

She was off like the wind, and in a few minutes the town lay far behind her. But fate had decreed to take sides with Roberts.

On the bare downs, treeless and houseless, the lightning leaped out like a two-edged sword. There came the booming

KATHERINE.

crash of thunder, then a deluge of rain, and the mid-day summer tempest was upon her in its might. The swift, sudden blaze of the lightning in his eyes startled the nervous system of llderim. He tossed his little black Arabian head in the air with a snort of terror, made a bound forward and fled over the grassy plains with the speed of an express train. " A runaway, by Jove ! "

A man darted forward with the cry upon his lips, and made the agile spring of a wild-cat at llderim' s bridle rein. A moment's struggle and then the spirited Arab stood still under the grasp of an iron hand, quivering in every limb, and his mistress, looking down from her saddle, met full two of the most beautiful eyes into which it had ever been her good fortune to look.

It was Mr. Gaston Dantree, the handsome, silver-voiced tenor of last night's concert, and a flash of glad surprise lit up her face.

"Mr. Dantree ! " she cried, "you ! and in this tempest, and at so opportune a moment. How shall I thank you for save — for rendering me such very timely assistance ? "

" For saving my life," she had been going to say, but that would have been coming it a little too strong. Her life had not been in the smallest danger — she was a thorough horsewoman, and could have managed a much wilder animal than llderim. But the knight to the rescue was Mr. Dantree, and last night Miss Dangerfield had looked for the first time into those wondrous eyes of gold-brown light and fallen straight in love with their owner.

He was very handsome ; perfectly, faultlessly- handsome, with an olive complexion, a low forehead, a chiselled nose, a thick black mustache, and two dark almond eyes, of "liquid light." Not tall, not stout, not very manly-looking, perhaps, in any way, men were rather given to sneer at Mr. Gaston Dantree' s somewhat effeminate beauty. But they never sneered long. There was that in Mr. Dantree' s black eyes, in Mr. Dantree's musical voice, in Mr. Dantree' s trained muscles, that would have rendered a serious difficulty a Uttle unpleasant. He took off his hat now, despite the pouring rain, and stood before the heiress of Scarswood, looking like the Apollo himself in a shabby shooting jacket.

" You do me too much honor, ]\liss Dangerfield ; I don't really think your life was in any danger — still it's pleasant to know / was the one to stop your black steed all the same. Rather

KATHERINE.

a coincidence, by the bye, that I should meet you here just at present, as, taking advantage of last night's kind invitation, I was about to present rnyself at Scarswood."

"And Scarswood is very well worth seeing, I assure you. As it is not more than a quarter of a mile to the gates, suppose you resume your hat and your journey ?"

"But, Miss Dangerfield, you will get your death at this pace, in this downpour."

"Oh, no, I'll not," Katherine answered coolly. "The rain will never fall that will give me my death ! You don't know how strong I am. Come, Mr. Dantree, let me see if you can walk as fast as Ilderim."