Silvermead

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Chapter 1

“ To night I shall see him! To-night! JN o, surely it can hardly be. What? In one, two, three, in seven hours, he will walk into dinner. ’ ’

This to herself, at sweet seventeen, spoke Camilla Harding, of a young fellow she had met but once before. To be sure, it had been at a county ball, and though they had only danced together twice, there had been a good deal of sitting about, and ice hunting; in short, she and Horace Brudeyell had been — well, mutually well impressed, and had “ got on,” as his friend Jack Forbes expressed it, “ like wild tire.” She is up in her room now, her thoughts on her first love, as she already calls him to herself, her eyes on— her glass.

It is so dreadfully tiresome to love a man you know nothing about, for you cannot tell what to be at to please him. In attire, does he like the simple or the elaborate? In complexion, does he affect paleness or a glowing flush? In manner, is it the interesting or the jolly that he will deem the more winsome? Oh, it is dreadful not to know!

Poor little Lilia, as she had christened herself at the age of three, was quite in a quandary. She was not in a humor to do anything but prepare for half-past seven, and her ignorance of young Brudenell’s tastes took all the direction, so to speak, out of her enthusiasm.

“ He seemed to like me wonderfully,” she reflects, “ at the ball last week, and I was simple enough then.”

Lilia had little confidence in her own judgment in dress. In fact she never really cared for herself, except in all black or all white. . At the ball she had worn white tulle illusion, with daisy chains and ! a double row of the same unconceited flower around her pretty head.

Lilia is petite, and slightly, very slightly, mind, plump for her years. Men call her a little duck. Her flesh is more beautiful than her features, which are pretty enough all the same, though still inferior in shape to the marvelous material of w T hich they are formed. The highest possible degree of health without the most distant approach to coarseness, that describes her best. A low dress with short sleeves is especially becoming to her, and she wants no velvet about her round throat to point out its creaminess. Her fluffy hair of light, light brown, always looks as if it were going to be blown away, and while j r ou like it tor dancing up, you long to smooth it down. Her blue- gray eyes and her full little mouth have a. de-

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light ful expression of — what shall 1 say? — of asking for protection* which to the male heart, at least, is very touching.

“You have no real beauty, child,” old Lady PrenJergast, her grandmother, with whom she lives at Silvermead Park, had of leu said to her, “ and so 1 shall bring you out young. A girl must make the most of her freshness when she has nothing else. 1 didn’t come out till 1 was twenty, and looked more, but — well 1 was different. There is nothing of the Juno about you,” and the proud old woman would give her fine old head a little shake and sit more bolt upright than ever.

1 was forgetting Lilia’s little nose. Tnat would never do. It is small,' of course, "and slightly aspiring, but it is a very important little nose, all the same." It speaks to one of ideas and an alluring willfulness ; does away with any impression of milk and water, or, if you are a stickler for words, 1 will say cream and water, which the rest of her sweet person may have suggested, and, with its narrow, ever-moving nostrils, is just the comedian of her face, in which the mouth and eyes play the sentimental business.

Altogether Camilla Harding is what 1 should call rather an exasperating girl for women to contemplate; and, as a matter of fact* such few of them as happen to be not quite angelic delight in running her down to men.

Mrs. Routley said the other night to Jack Forbes (the three Miss Routleys are not attractive and don’t seem to marry):

“ But, seriously, you can see nothing much in that little dot?”

“No, not now,” he replied, “but when 1 put up my glass — there, so — I see a great deal.”

Jack, though a good-hearted fellow in the main, is cruel to some people.

“ Well, to be sure — what will men admire next!”

“ You are right, after looking at Miss Harding, probably nothing for some time. ’ ’

“ But — but,” went on the old woman waxing warm at Jack’s rude answer, “ she has an insignificant figure.”

“ Small, 1 own.” Jack is a bit of an artist, and etches delightfully, while he has the sense not to paint; “ but there is magnificent length from her hip to the ground.”

“ You mean she is dreadfully short- waisted. Just look, her waist is right under her arms.” The three Routley girls have no legs.

‘ * Come, you must own her waist is very short. ’ ’

“Yes, yes,” Jack drawled, “about as short as the Venus de Medicis’.”

Here Mrs. Routley turned her back upon Jack Forbes, and mentally set him down as a very ill-bred young man.

When you look at Lilia, she sets you wondering. You would like to be inside her head for a span. Has she ever heard of murders, disease, and death? She is so brimming with life and hope that somehow she carries you into a new region, and you find yourself growing to believe that all dreadful things are mere appearances and deceptions — that she, she and her girlish views, in their unspeakable health and strength are the only realities. You conclude her to be sensitive, unselfish, tender-hearted to man and beas^; then how can she, in this afflicting and afflicted world, be that sheer em-

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bodiment of Spring and Joy which beams before you. You mature ones, who have been groveling along for years, cogitating, weighing, splitting hairs, what has it all come to?

Look there! Would you not barter decades of an existence like yours to be Lilia Harding for one hour? See, she has only drunk some water, but buckets of champagne could never give you a taste of the intoxication she enjoys. Can she live in a house, buy boots and shoes, be scolded by her grandmother, and yet be there fluttering before you with bloom as untouched of soul and body as a butterfly ’sat its emancipation?

You feel at such a question that

“ There are more things in heaven and earth Than are dreamt of in your philosophy,”

and probably do not care to pursue the theme any further.

The luncheon bell summoned the young girl from her reveries, and dashing down a Gloire de Dijon rose she had been holding at one side of her head as an experiment, she tripped and bounded down the gloomy black oak staircase like a sunbeam in a cavern, and caroling away as she went.

Prompt as she had been Lady Prendergast was already seated in the great dining-room, which was almost as severe as herself and the staircase.

“ Lilia, where have you been?” said the old lady. ” I sought you in the library, where you ought to have been at your history ; I heard you not in the music-room, when your hour for practice struck ; and now 1 am kept waiting for luncheon. W here have yon been?”

“ Gran’ma, I have been arranging some things in my room.”

I am not going to describe Lady Prendergast’s appearance, because I am so tired in novels of grand old ladies in dark silk with snowy hair and ancient lace, “like an old picture.” They are of two kinds: the brightly amiable, and the redoubtable. Well, let us say that Lady Prendergast was one of the latter, and have done with it.

“ Camilla, when 1 gave you the option of coming out at seventeen, 1 made a compact with you, that your education was to continue as if you had not left the schoolroom.”

“ I know, gran’ma, but — ”

“ 1 will not be interrupted thus,” helping herself to stewed rabbit, which a powdered footman handed — for there is much state at Silvermead. The butler and another splendid menial are in the room.

Lady Prendergast is not an ill-bred woman, but she chooses at times purposely to do ill-bred things. She knows it is bad taste to lecture this great come-out girl before the servants, but her motive is to put her back in her place, and teach her not to give herself airs. She pursues :

“ A compact is, between honorable people, as binding on one side as the other. 1 brought you out, as 1 promised, thus performing my part of the bargain. Of course you do not intend to fulfill yours; only, mark this, and do not hope you have made a fool of me. I never for a moment supposed that you would fulfill it.” Then, breaking into French for the final dig, she adds :

SILYERMEAD.

Think not because Lilia continued to eat lier roast chicken without the slightest sign of emotion that she is lacking in pride, sensibility, or love for her absent father. It is only that she has grown accustomed to these taunts. Then, she knows that, as to this particular morning, her septuagenarian relative is right. Lilia has been idle. 1 fancy too that the presence of the servants lias something to do with her success in controlling her usually too high temper. Perhaps Lady Prendergast did not quite relish this utterly undemonstrative way of meeting her reproof. At any rate, as soon as the exigencies of the table permitted it, she said, “ Bates, you needn’t wait,” and lo, like unto shadows, the three powerful and beerprimed men departed.

The joyousness of Lilia’s nature at this period of her existence must have been a perfectly inexhaustible fund. To say that she was sanguine conveys a very faint idea of her almost absurd hopefulness on all subjects. As her beauty irritated other women, so this imperturbable talent for happiness often provoked her grandmother’s somewhat soured nature; and had, further, the effect of divesting in her own eyes the harshest acts or words, with which she chose to visit Lilia, of any taint of cruelty. How can you be cruel if you do not inflict pain? And, really, unless this merry girl knocked her foot against some grass-hidden stone in one of tier mad courses with Rolfe, the deerhound — when she would cry like a baby for ten seconds, and then laugh at herself for having cried — she never showed that she suffered.

Here were these two close relations living together for j r ears, and the strange thing was that the old lady, who was always saying unkind words, hid beneath all her harshness a passionate love for the girl; while Lilia, who never, or scarcely ever, forgot to be polite and respectful, had no spark of gratitude or affection for Lady Prendergast. 1 may sa}' at once that this was the old lady’s grand cross in life, for she was under no illusion on the subject. She hoped, of course, for love of any kind must hope or die; but she knew that all .the conscientious severity, and all the indulgence, for she had tried both, which she so lavishly bestowed on her dead -daughter’s child, had hitherto been as seed flung upon a rock.

This thought was present, in all its bitterness as the two sat sucking their hot-house grapes this April afternoon.

“ Of course,” said the grandmother, “ 1 know 1 might as well talk to a wall as to you.”

“ Oh, gran’ma, don’t say that; you know I do study, and play the piano some mornings.”

“ Yes, as your father was a good husband to my daughter — sometimes.”

“ Well, he can never have been very bad, for you say she worshiped him to the end. ’ ’

‘‘But, you poor, silly thing, that was out of the wealth of her goodness, not from his deserts. She loved him once and for ever, as a mother loves her prodigal; poor sainted Agatha!” and the old lady wiped away a genuine tear. “ Oh, that you would imitate lier!”

“ You know, gran’ma, I was only two when she died.”

“ Yes, and her death was a curse of Heaven upon your father for his incorrigible gambling, and — and woise.”

This was a little beyond even Lilia’s endurance, and she cried —

“ It is no use your abusing papa, because it onty makes me love him, if possible, more and more eveiy time you blame him,” and she looked the old lady full in the face, and the latter could not bear the glance.

“ Hear, hear him speak for himself,” and Lady Prendergast pulled a foreign letter from her pocket, and, adjusting her spectacles, prepared to read. Lilia’s face changed in an instant.

“ A letler from papa! And you never told me!”

“ It is always time enough to hear what lie has to say.”

Lilia had half risen, but resumed her seat upon the other’s severe, “ Sit down.”

“ Always time enough to hear what he has to say,” and there was smoldering rage as well as open contempt in the ring of the aged voice. Then she read :

“ You will be glad, or, by-the-bye, I suppose I should say sorry, to hear that 1 have, at last, had a turn of luck. At the Vienna races 1 cleared six hundred pounds, so 1 write to say I will not trouble you for my monthly dividend this time. Also, that 1 feel confident that this little win is the turn in the tide of my fate. It is what I have long wanted in order to try a system at Monaco, which has never yet failed, but which so few besides myself iiave the self command seriously to test. ’ ’

“ His self command!” scoffed her ladyship.

“ Go on, go on!”

“ You know I am not fond of in-door work. 1 shall, therefore, limit my plundering of Blanc & Co. to ten thousand pounds, and then set up a racing establishment once more at dear old Newmarket, where my unrivaled knowledge of the craft must, if 1 have only the barest modicum of luck, rapidly make me one of the richest men in England. To your severe mind, no doubt, these views are, to say the least, chimerical. You are like the rest of the world, and only judge by results. YY)u have never done any justice to my abilities. But time will show. To me my future is clear and bright, and, this being so, my first thought is my darling Lilia.”

“ My own papa!” said the girl, almost to herself.

“ Y’ou have taken advantage of my misfortunes to part us, but I warn you to prepare for a change, as I shall no longer be in need of your charity. I have a right to do as 1 like with my own child. 1 will that she* remain under your roof for extra satety until my certain hopes are partly realized, but 1 command that she at once be permitted to write to me. Your forbidding our correspondence was always an unnatural abuse of the power which my cruel stars placed in your hands, and was only endured by me from sheer necessity. Y'our brief notes stating that Lilia is well, are poor comfort to a father’s heart.”

“Oh, my poor, dear, darling, handsome papa!” exclaimed his daughter. * “ Gran’ma, you will let me write.”

“"Never,” said the old lady. “ Think for one moment, if you can think; if you love him, reclaim him. You are his only stay, his only safeguard. He loves you and yearns every day, more and

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more, for your letters, for your company, but be loves bis passion more. ’ ’

* ‘ It is false!”

“ Is it tbougb? He proves it. He can have you to-morrow, live with you in decent comfort. I have offered seven hundred a year for his solemn word; for, wretched as my opinion of him is in other things, 1 think he would keep his word.” m

“ Think! My papa is the soul of honor!”

“ Oh, vastly honorable, in good sooth! He has the honor of a gamester; enough to keep his word, not enough to care about bringing my child to the grave, and utterly disgracing his own.”

When one of two disputants quits the conversational tone, it is rare indeed but that the other follows suit. It was now Lilia’s turn to flare up. W ith flashing eyes, she rose and said :

“ Grandma, I will write!”

“ Will, indeed!”

“ Yes, will; so, quick, the address.”

“lam not wicked enough to give it to you.”

“ Then,” and the girl snatched the letter, but the next moment burst into tears of rage.

The address had been neatly cut out from the head of the paper.

Chapter II

Lady Prendergast’s dinner party took place that evening as blithely as though no painful family^ scene had preceded it.

Female tears are among the most attractive things imaginable, but their traces are certainly not becoming; and Lilia was especially glad on this occasion that they left no more lasting sign upon her dainty cheeks than a shower of rain does on a gravel walk. When she met her “ ancestor,” as she now jokingly to herself, and formerly to her father, termed her aged relation, at five o’clock tea, the two ex- *- changed the usual civil common places as if nothing had happened. Lady Prendergast felt that she had checkmated her headstrong girl, and the latter wished to show that she was not permanently upset by it. The only effect of the luncheon scene was that Lilia would not condescend to ask several leading questions about Mr. Brudenell, which, ever since the eventful ball at which she lost her heart, as she put it to herself, she had been from day to day deferring to ask, she hardly knew why.

At present she knows not at all how the old lady would look on - the match, if to matching her flirtation wit A the young man should ever come. She is only aware that Horace is heir presumptive to his uncle, Sir Howard Brudenell, a magistrate of the Midland county, where these events are passing; which uncle, although seeming to adopt him as his son, is yet himself a youngish man, a widower without family, and who has never said but what he might marry again. That Horace, now two and twenty, has been for many years an orphan, Camilla knows ; but she is in total ignorance of what his means may be, independently of his rich uncle.

The first of the dinner party to arrive was Miss Laffinch, a spiteful, even poisonous old maid, who lived in the village, and who held her own with all the people of note round about, by what can only be described as the secret terror she inspired.

She had the most wonderful way of making you understand her without ever saying in set terms what she meant. She contrived to convey the impression on first meeting you that she was wholly unprincipled, and would surely, sooner or later, stab you in the dark, unless you made it worth her while to pat you on the back. All that can be said in palliation of this policy is that she had no other means of being what she lived to be— a power. She was very clever, but told herself that “ good cleverness ” was comparatively a sorry weapon for a lone, needy, and ill-favored woman to wield.

To-day, for instance, the party was much too good for her. There were the Marquis of Caulfield and his handsome daughter, Lady Susan Graye; the County Member and the Hon. Mrs. de Basle, Lord and Lady Fouroaks, who keep the merriest and most open house for twenty miles round, and yet Miss Laffinch w r as asked literally on account of the lies she would tell if left out. Lady Prendergast is quite aware that this poisonous person knows all about Cave Harding, Lilia’s gambling and much too gay fatherand, until the girl is settled in life, she does not venture to brave her vindictive tongue. Besides,' you meet her everywhere, often staying on visits in country houses, and, until the whole county shall combine to drop and cut her with one accord, they all elect to do like one another, and hating, still invite her.

Horace Brudenell comes in one of the last, with his chum, Jack Forbes. The object of Lilia’s infatuation is a pleasant enough object for the general eye to contemplate. Not much above the middle height, he looks taller than he is, from his erect carriage and wellproportioned figure. His dark, classic head reminds one not a little of Byron’s, with its short, close, natural curls in thick profusion around it. His manner and address are good, and very quiet. The complexion and general expression of the face speak of outdoor pursuits rather than literary ones, and prepare you to find in Brudenell less of acquired knowledge, less of the ideas of others, than natural gifts, and a pleasant fancy of his own. His boyish dream was for the army, but Sir Howard would not hear of it, and he is now studying under his uncle’s land agent. The fields are his books, and he is generally in the saddle by seven o’clock in the morning, free to sleep of an afternoon, if he likes, for Horace is not in favor of early closing of his eyes, and when there is a ball or other night revel toward, he often sallies forth to his work with no more restful invigorators than a bath and a biscuit.

After shaking hands with his hostess, he does so with Camilla, who is surprised to note more of marked grave deference than of any more cordial quality in his greeting. Lovers never see clearly, and, therefore, the young girl can hardly be expected to guess that the true reading of Brudenell’s manner is that he would not have her think that any 'prevenance with which she may have honored him the other night has left auglit in his mind to justify a more familiar footing. Yet without rightly analyzing the motive, she is still, pleased with the courtly way in which he accosts her.

The women who have not a passion for respect are very few and far between, and if there were none at all devoid of it the world

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would be all the better oft. How often has a man lost in the one instant of greeting all the ground he so laboriously won at the last interview, by coming up to a woman with a familiar smile that says, “ Well, we did get on the other night, didn’t we?” On the contrary, what draws a woman on to intimacy is that you should never appear aware of your progress. Thus a witty Frenchman has said —

“ A woman is like your shadow; follow her, and she flies; but run away, and she pursues you.”

It was then with the merest commonplace that Horace opened conversation with the young lady of the house. _

■ * I hope you were not very tired the other night, Miss Harding, it is a long drive,” and he added to himself:

“ Well, you are a beauty, even prettier than 1 thought 3 r ou were.”

While she: “Tired! That is a thing 1 scarcely ever am, and never when I am happy. ”

. And to herself: “ Oh! his eyes and his voice are too charming, and will distract me so I shall hardly hear what he says sufficiently to answer him.”

And she kept her own eyes down, not from affected modesty, but for fear they should speak too plainly, and too soon.

“ Shall you be at the Hasham dance on Monday?”

“ 1 do not see how it can be managed. ’ ’

“ Oh, but it must be.”

* l Must it! Why?”

‘ * Because — because, in the first place, you are fond of dancing, and then it will be a great pleasure to me to meet you there.”

“ Will it?”

“ I am sure you know it wifl.”

“ I am very glad.”

“ Are you? That 1 want to meet you there? Oh, why?”

“ It is always pieasapt to be appreciated.”

How long they would have gone on reveling in such nothings, like very lovers as they already were, 1 cannot say; for the announcement of dinner now came to interrupt their prattle. Brudenell was told to take in Lady Susan Graye, whereon Lilia suddenly found herself speculating upon that tall young beauty’s attractiveness in a way she had never done before.

“ Well,” she thinks, “ the same man could hardly admire us both, so if he cares for me at all, she will not distract him from me.”

The next best thing to sitting beside the person you care for at table is to be opposite, and to-day Lilia’s innocent little maneuvers with Mr. de Basle to effect this end proved quite successful.

The county member is a cheery old fellow of sixty, and while he delights in a pretty girl, is a model to too many men of his years in his way of showing it. It is thoroughly paternal —

“ Old as I am, for ladies’ love unfit,

The power of beauty I acknowledge yet.”

That is all very well, but the whole question lies in the way of acknowledging it. Mr. de Basle’s manly, honest way, which has no ogling and sighing about it, is, unhappily; the rare exception; the rule being that old fellows either don’t bother their heads at all about the young beauties they meet in society, or they annoy and disgust

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them by perpetually implying llieir sentiments by their words and their looks.

Mr. de Basle and Lilia had met several times before, so they now embarked merrily in discussion on various topics of the hour, chiefly local. But the old gentleman was not one of the most popular ban* terers in the House of Commons for nothing, nor could he sit so near the electric telegraph of our young couples’ eyes across the table without finding out the best way of interesting his fair neighbor.

“ Handsome boy that, ” he said, “ isn’t he?”

“ What, Mr. Brudenell? Yes, he is good-looking, certainly.”

“ And not a bit spoiled — yet.”

“ Yet!”

“ It will be a wonder if he isn’t as conceited as the rest of them very soon. All the women at our side of the country rave about him.”

“ Do they indeed?”

“ Every one of them. As I say, the young fellow is well enough, but to hear them talk, and see them go on—”

“ Well?”

“Well, it doesn’t say much for our other young men— poor things!”

This was becoming something more than highly interesting, it was alarming. Lilia said to herself, “ After all, 1 might have known it! If 1 can see that there is no one like him, why should not others? He is nice to me, no doubt, but, oh, is he not so to manymore? M'ith all women at his feet — and it is no woman, but this hard man of the world that says it — will he not buy wealth and freedom by marrying some great heiress? Lady Susan, perhaps? Yes, she is an only child. See how she smiles on him! Oli, how 1 wish Jack Forbes, as they call him, had taken her in; he is so delightfully ugly.”

“ You don’t see much of the hunting, 1 think,” said the M.P. “ 1 never meet you in the field.”

“We drive to the meet when it is near, but there is a great fault in my education. You smile! you think there are many — ”

“ Nothing of the sort.”

“ Oh, yes, and there are; but I mean 1 was never taught to ride.” 7

And Lilia’s thoughts cast back to her nomadic existence with her father, when no time was ever found for anything but the winning of money or losing it. Yes, thorough Bohemians they had been; and it look all Camilla’s gentle blood to have retained her high breeding in spite of the strange experiences of her young life. By fits and starts she had lived with Lady Prendergast, both in London and at Silvermead, for uncertain periods ever since her childhood ; but the course of her education had been too often checked for it to bear much of the desired fruit, and had she not been both singularly apt, and, as girls go, decidedly fond of her lessons, the result must have proved disastrous.

“Ah! 1 admit now,” said the old gentleman, “ that in the hunting field young Brudenell deserves all the credit he wins; and 1 think his fondness for the sport will save him, in spite of his curls and his eyelashes. 1 don’t ride hard myself, and am a sixteen-stone