Читать книгу Elster's Folly - Henry Wood - Страница 5

The rain poured down on the Monday morning; and Lord Hartledon stood at the window of the countess-dowager's sitting-room—one she had unceremoniously adopted for her own private use—smoking a cigar, and watching the clouds. Any cigar but his would have been consigned to the other side the door. Mr. Elster had only shown (by mere accident) the end of his cigar-case, and the dowager immediately demanded what he meant by displaying that article in the presence of ladies. A few minutes afterwards Lord Hartledon entered, smoking, and was allowed to enjoy his cigar with impunity. Good-tempered Val's delicate lips broke into a silent smile as he marked the contrast.

He lounged on the sofa, doing nothing, in his idle fashion; Lord Hartledon continued to watch the clouds. On the previous Saturday night the gentlemen had entered into an argument about boating: the result was that a match on the river was arranged, and some bets were pending on it. It had been fixed to come off this day, Monday; but if the rain continued to come down, it must be postponed; for the ladies, who had been promised the treat, would not venture out to see it.

"It has come on purpose," grumbled Lord Hartledon. "Yesterday was as fine and bright as it could be, the glass standing at set fair; and now, just because this boating was to come off, the rain peppers down!"

The rain excepted, it was a fair vision that he looked out upon. The room faced the back of the house, and beyond the lovely grounds green slopes extended to the river, tolerably wide here, winding peacefully in its course. The distant landscape was almost like a scene from fairyland.

The restless dowager—in a nondescript head-dress this morning, adorned with an upright tuft of red feathers and voluminous skirts of brown net, a jacket and flounces to match—betook herself to the side of Lord Hartledon.

"Where d'you get the boats?" she asked.

"They are kept lower down, at the boat-house," he replied, puffing at his cigar. "You can't see it from here; it's beyond Dr. Ashton's; lots of 'em; any number to be had for the hiring. Talking of Dr. Ashton, they will dine here to-day, ma'am."

"Who will?" asked Lady Kirton.

"The doctor, Mrs. Ashton—if she's well enough—and Miss Ashton."

"Who are they, my dear nephew?"

"Why, don't you know? Dr. Ashton preached to you yesterday. He is Rector of Calne; you must have heard of Dr. Ashton. They will be calling this morning, I expect."

"And you have invited them to dinner! Well, one must do the civil to this sort of people."

Lord Hartledon burst into a laugh. "You won't say 'this sort of people' when you see the Ashtons, Lady Kirton. They are quite as good as we are. Dr. Ashton has refused a bishopric, and Anne is the sweetest girl ever created."

Lady Maude, who was drawing, and exchanging a desultory sentence once in a way with Val, suddenly looked up. Her colour had heightened, though it was brilliant at all times.

"Are you speaking of my maid?" she said—and it might be that she had not attended to the conversation, and asked in ignorance, not in scorn. "Her name is Anne."

"I was speaking of Anne Ashton," said Lord Hartledon.

"Allow me to beg Anne Ashton's pardon," returned Lady Maude; her tone this time unmistakably mocking. "Anne is so common a name amongst servants."

"I don't care whether it is common amongst servants or uncommon," spoke Lord Hartledon rather hotly, as though he would resent the covert sneer. "It is Anne Ashton's; and I love the name for her sake. But I think it a pretty name; and should, if she did not bear it; prettier than yours, Maude."

"And pray who is Anne Ashton?" demanded the countess-dowager, with as much hauteur as so queer an old figure and face could put on, whilst Maude bent over her employment with white lips.

"She is Dr. Ashton's daughter," spoke Lord Hartledon, shortly. "My father valued him above all men. He loved Anne too—loved her dearly; and—though I don't know whether it is quite fair to Anne to let this out—the probable future connection between the families was most welcome to him. Next to my father, we boys reverenced the doctor; he was our tutor, in a measure, when we were staying at Hartledon; at least, tutor to poor George and Val; they used to read with him."

"And you would hint at some alliance between you and this Anne Ashton!" cried the countess-dowager, in a fume; for she thought she saw a fear that the great prize might slip through her fingers. "What sort of an alliance, I should like to ask? Be careful what you say, Hartledon; you may injure the young woman."

"I'll take care I don't injure Anne Ashton," returned Lord Hartledon, enjoying her temper. "As to an alliance with her—my earnest wish is, as it was my father's, that time may bring it about. Val there knows I wish it."

Val glanced at his brother by way of answer. He had taken no part in the discussion; his slight lips were drawn down, as he balanced a pair of scissors on his forefinger, and he looked less good-tempered than usual.

"Has she red hair and sky-blue eyes, and a doll's face? Does she sit in the pew under the reading-desk with three other dolls?" asked the foaming dowager.

Lord Hartledon turned and stared at the speaker in wonder—what could be so exciting her?

"She has soft brown hair and eyes, and a sweet gentle face; she is a graceful, elegant, attractive girl," said he, curtly. "She sat alone yesterday; for Arthur was in another part of the church, and Mrs. Ashton was not there. Mrs. Ashton is not in good health, she tells me, and cannot always come. The Rector's pew is the one with green curtains."

"Oh, that vulgar-looking girl!" exclaimed Maude, her unjust words—and she knew them to be unjust—trembling on her lips. "The Grand Sultan might exalt her to be his chief wife, but he could never make a lady of her, or get her to look like one."

"Be quiet, Maude," cried the countess-dowager, who, with all her own mistakes, had the sense to see that this sort of disparagement would only recoil upon them with interest, and who did not like the expression of Lord Hartledon's face. "You talk as if you had seen this Mrs. Ashton, Hartledon, since your return."

"I should not be many hours at Hartledon without seeing Mrs. Ashton," he answered. "That's where I was yesterday afternoon, ma'am, when you were so kindly anxious in your inquiries as to what had become of me. I dare say I was absent an unconscionable time. I never know how it passes, once I am with Anne."

"We represent Love as blind, you know," spoke Maude, in her desperation, unable to steady her pallid lips. "You apparently do not see it, Lord Hartledon, but the young woman is the very essence of vulgarity."

A pause followed the speech. The countess-dowager turned towards her daughter in a blazing rage, and Val Elster quitted the room.

"Maude," said Lord Hartledon, "I am sorry to tell you that you have put your foot in it."

"Thank you," panted Lady Maude, in her agitation. "For giving my opinion of your Anne Ashton?"

"Precisely. You have driven Val away in suppressed indignation."

"Is Val of the Anne Ashton faction, that the truth should tell upon him, as well as upon you?" she returned, striving to maintain an assumption of sarcastic coldness.

"It is upon him that the words will tell. Anne is engaged to him."

"Is it true? Is Val really engaged to her?" cried the countess-dowager in an ecstacy of relief, lifting her snub nose and painted cheeks, whilst a glad light came into Maude's eyes again. "I did hear he was engaged to some girl; but such reports of younger sons go for nothing."

"Val was engaged to her before he went abroad. Whether he will get her or not, is another thing."

"To hear you talk, Hartledon, one might have supposed you cared for the girl yourself," cried Lady Kirton; but her brow was smooth again, and her tone soft as honey. "You should be more cautious."

"Cautious! Why so? I love and respect Anne beyond any girl on earth. But that Val hastened to make hay when the sun shone, whilst I fell asleep under the hedge, I don't know but I might have proposed to her myself," he added, with a laugh. "However, it shall not be my fault if Val does not win her."

The countess-dowager said no more. She was worldly-wise in her way, and thought it best to leave well alone. Sailing out of the room she left them alone together: as she was fond of doing.

"Is it not rather—rather beneath an Elster to marry an obscure country clergyman's daughter?" began Lady Maude, a strange bitterness filling her heart.

"I tell you, Maude, the Ashtons are our equals in all ways. He is a proud old doctor of divinity—not old, however—of irreproachable family and large private fortune."

"You spoke of him as a tutor?"

"A tutor! Oh, I said he was in a measure our tutor when we were young. I meant in training us—in training us to good; and he allowed George and Val to read with him, and directed their studies: all for love, and out of the friendship he and my father bore each other. Dr. Ashton a paid tutor!" ejaculated Lord Hartledon, laughing at the notion. "Dr. Ashton an obscure country clergyman! And even if he were, who is Val, that he should set himself up?"

"He is the Honourable Val Elster."

"Very honourable! Val is an unlucky dog of a spendthrift; that's what Val is. See how many times he has been set up on his legs!—and has always come down again. He had that place in the Government my father got him. He was attaché in Paris; subsequently in Vienna; he has had ever so many chances, and drops through all. One can't help loving Val; he is an attractive, sweet-tempered, good-natured fellow; but he was certainly born under an unlucky star. Elster's folly!"

"Val will drop through more chances yet," remarked Lady Maude. "I pity Miss Ashton, if she means to wait for him."

"Means to! She loves him passionately—devotedly. She would wait for him all her life, and think it happiness only to see him once in a way."

"As an astronomer looks at a star through a telescope," laughed Maude; "and Val is not worth the devotion."

"Val is not a bad fellow in the main; quite the contrary, Maude. Of course we all know his besetting sin—irresolution. A child might sway him, either for good or ill. The very best thing that could happen to Val would be his marriage with Anne. She is sensible and judicious; and I think Val could not fail to keep straight under her influence. If Dr. Ashton could only be brought to see the matter in this light!"

"Can he not?"

"He thinks—and I don't say he has not reason—that Val should show some proof of stability before his marriage, instead of waiting until after it. The doctor has not gone to the extent of parting them, or of suspending the engagement; but he is prepared to be strict and exacting as to Mr. Val's line of conduct; and I fancy the suspicion that it would be so has kept Val away from Calne."

"What will be done?"

"I hardly know. Val does not make a confidant of me, and I can't get to the bottom of how he is situated. Debts I am sure he has; but whether—"

"Val always had plenty of those," interrupted Maude.

"True. When my father died, three parts of Val's inheritance went to pay off debts nobody knew he had contracted. The worst is, he glides into these difficulties unwittingly, led and swayed by others. We don't say Elster's sin, or Elster's crimes; we say Elster's folly. I don't believe Val ever in his life did a bad thing of deliberate intention. Designing people get hold of him—fast fellows who are going headlong down-hill themselves—and Val, unable to say 'No,' is drawn here and drawn there, and tumbles with them into a quagmire, and perhaps has to pay his friends' costs, as well as his own, before he can get out of it. Do you believe in luck, Maude?"

"In luck?" answered Maude, raising her eyes at the abrupt question. "I don't know."

"I believe in it. I believe that some are born under a lucky star, and others under an unlucky one. Val is one of the latter. He is always unlucky. Set him up, and down he comes again. I don't think I ever knew Val lucky in my life. Look at his nearly blowing his arm off that time in Scotland! You will laugh at me, I dare say; but a thought crosses me at odd moments that his ill-luck will prevail still, in the matter of Miss Ashton. Not if I can help it, however; I'll do my best, for Anne's sake."

"You seem to think very much of her yourself," cried Lady Maude, her cheeks crimsoning with an angry flush.

"I do—as Val's future wife. I love Anne Ashton better than any one else in the world. We all loved her. So would you if you knew her. In my mother's last illness Anne was a greater comfort to her than Laura."

"Should you ever think of a wife on your own score, she may not like this warm praise of Miss Anne Ashton," said Lady Maude, assiduously drawing, her hot face bent down to within an inch of the cardboard.

"Not like it? She wouldn't be such an idiot, I hope, as to dislike it. Is not Anne going to be my brother's wife? Did you suppose I spoke of Anne in that way?—you must have been dreaming, Maude."

Maude hoped she had been. The young man took his cigar from his mouth, ran a penknife through the end, and began smoking again.

"That time is far enough off, Maude. I am not going to tie myself up with a wife, or to think of one either, for many a long year to come."

Her heart beat with a painful throbbing. "Why not?"

"No danger. My wild oats are not sown yet, any more than Val's; only you don't hear of them, because I have money to back me, and he has not. I must find a girl I should like to make my wife before that event comes off, Maude; and I have not found her yet."

Lady Maude damaged her landscape. She sketched in a tree where a chimney ought to have been, and laid the fault upon her pencil.

"It has been real sport, Maude, ever since I came home from knocking about abroad, to hear and see the old ladies. They think I am to be caught with a bait; and that bait is each one's own enchanting daughter. Let them angle, an they please—it does no harm. They are amused, and I am none the worse. I enjoy a laugh sometimes, while I take care of myself; as I have need to do, or I might find myself the victim of some detestable breach-of-promise affair, and have to stand damages. But for Anne Ashton, Val would have had his head in that Westminster-noose a score of times; and the wonder is that he has kept out of it. No, thank you, my ladies; I am not a marrying man."

"Why do you tell me this?" asked Lady Maude, a sick faintness stealing over her face and heart.

"You are one of ourselves, and I tell you anything. It will be fun for you, Maude, if you'll open your eyes and look on. There are some in the house now who—" He stopped and laughed.

"I would rather not hear this!" she cried passionately. "Don't tell me."

Lord Hartledon looked at her, begged her pardon, and quitted the room with his cigar. Lady Maude, black as night, dashed her pencil on to the cardboard, and scored her sketch all over with ugly black lines. Her face itself looked ugly then.

"Why did he say this to me?" she asked of her fevered heart. "Was it said with a purpose? Has he found out that I love him? that my shallow old mother is one of the subtlest of the anglers? and that—"

"What on earth are you at with your drawing, Maude?"

"Oh, I have grown sick of the sketch. I am not in a drawing mood to-day, mamma."

"And how fierce you were looking," pursued the countess-dowager, who had darted in at rather an inopportune moment for Maude—darting in on people at such moments being her habit. "And that was the sketch Hartledon asked you to do for him from the old painting!"

"He may do it himself, if he wants it done."

"Where is Hartledon?"

"I don't know. Gone out somewhere."

"Has he offended you, or vexed you?"

"Well, he did vex me. He has just been assuring me with the coolest air that he should never marry; or, at least, not for years and years to come. He told me to notice what a heap of girls were after him—or their mothers for them—and the fun he had over it, not being a marrying man."

"Is that all? You need not have put yourself in a fatigue, and spoilt your drawing. Lord Hartledon shall be your husband before six months are over—or reproach me ever afterwards with being a false prophetess and a bungling manager."

Maude's brow cleared. She had almost childlike confidence in the tact of her unscrupulous mother.

But how the morning's conversation altogether rankled in her heart, none save herself could tell: ay, and in that of the dowager. Although Anne Ashton was the betrothed of Percival Elster, and Lord Hartledon's freely-avowed love for her was evidently that of a brother, and he had said he should do all he could to promote the marriage, the strongest jealousy had taken possession of Lady Maude's heart. She already hated Anne Ashton with a fierce and bitter hatred. She turned sick with envy when, in the morning visit that was that day paid by the Ashtons, she saw that Anne was really what Lord Hartledon had described her—one of the sweetest, most lovable, most charming of girls; almost without her equal in the world for grace and goodness and beauty. She turned more sick with envy when, at dinner afterwards, to which the Ashtons came, Lord Hartledon devoted himself to them, almost to the neglect of his other guests, lingering much with Anne.

The countess-dowager marked it also, and was furious. Nothing could be urged against them; they were unexceptionable. The doctor, a chatty, straightforward, energetic man, of great intellect and learning, and emphatically a gentleman; his wife attracting by her unobtrusive gentleness; his daughter by her grace and modest self-possession. Whatever Maude Kirton might do, she could never, for very shame, again attempt to disparage them. Surely there was no just reason for the hatred which took possession of Maude's heart; a hatred that could never be plucked out again.

But Maude knew how to dissemble. It pleased her to affect a sudden and violent friendship for Anne.

"Hartledon told me how much I should like you," she whispered, as they sat together on the sofa after dinner, to which Maude had drawn her. "He said I should find you the dearest girl I ever met; and I do so. May I call you 'Anne'?"

Not for a moment did Miss Ashton answer. Truth to say, far from reciprocating the sudden fancy boasted of by Maude, she had taken an unaccountable dislike to her. Something of falsity in the tone, of sudden hardiesse in the handsome black eyes, acted upon Anne as an instinctive warning.

"As you please, Lady Maude."

"Thank you so much. Hartledon whispered to me the secret about you and Val—Percival, I mean. Shall you accomplish the task, think you?"

"What task?"

"That of turning him from his evil ways."

"His evil ways?" repeated Anne, in a surprised indignation she did not care to check. "I do not understand you, Lady Maude."

"Pardon me, my dear Anne: it was hazardous so to speak to you. I ought to have said his thoughtless ways. Quant à moi, je ne vois pas la différence. Do you understand French?"

Miss Ashton looked at her, really not knowing what this style of conversation might mean. Maude continued; she had a habit of putting forth a sting on occasion, or what she hoped might be a sting.

"You are staring at the superfluous question. Of course it is one in these French days, when everyone speaks it. What was I saying? Oh, about Percival. Should he ever have the luck to marry, meaning the income, he will make a docile husband; but his wife will have to keep him under her finger and thumb; she must be master as well as mistress, for his own sake."

"I think Mr. Elster would not care to be so spoken of," said Miss Ashton, her face beginning to glow.

"You devoted girl! It is you who don't care to hear it. Take care, Anne; too much love is not good for gaining the mastership; and I have heard that you are—shall I say it?—éperdue."

Anne, in spite of her calm good sense, was actually provoked to a retort in kind, and felt terribly vexed with herself for it afterwards. "A rumour of the same sort has been breathed as to the Lady Maude Kirton's regard for Lord Hartledon."

"Has it?" returned Lady Maude, with a cool tone and a glowing face. "You are angry with me without reason. Have I not offered to swear to you an eternal friendship?"

Anne shook her head, and her lips parted with a curious expression. "I do not swear so lightly, Lady Maude."

"What if I were to avow to you that it is true?—that I do love Lord Hartledon, deeply as it is known you love his brother," she added, dropping her voice—"would you believe me?"

Anne looked at the speaker's face, but could read nothing. Was she in jest or earnest?

"No, I would not believe you," she said, with a smile. "If you did love him, you would not proclaim it."

"Exactly. I was jesting. What is Lord Hartledon to me?—save that we are cousins, and passably good friends. I must avow one thing, that I like him better than I do his brother."

"For that no avowal is necessary," said Anne; "the fact is sufficiently evident."

"You are right, Anne;" and for once Maude spoke earnestly. "I do not like Percival Elster. But I will always be civil to him for your sweet sake."

"Why do you dislike him?—if I may ask it. Have you any particular reason for doing so?"

"I have no reason in the world. He is a good-natured, gentlemanly fellow; and I know no ill of him, except that he is always getting into scrapes, and dropping, as I hear, a lot of money. But if he got out of his last guinea, and went almost in rags, it would be nothing to me; so that's not it. One does take antipathies; I dare say you do, Miss Ashton. What a blessing Hartledon did not die in that fever he caught last year! Val would have inherited. What a mercy!"

"That he lived? or that Val is not Lord Hartledon?"

"Both. But I believe I meant that Val is not reigning."

"You think he would not have made a worthy inheritor?"

"A worthy inheritor? Oh, I was not glancing at that phase of the question. Here he comes! I will give up my seat to him."

It is possible Lady Maude expected some pretty phrases of affection; begging her to keep it. If so, she was mistaken. Anne Ashton was one of those essentially quiet, self-possessed girls in society, whose manners seem almost to border on apathy. She did not say "Do go," or "Don't go." She was perfectly passive; and Maude moved away half ashamed of herself, and feeling, in spite of her jealousy and her prejudice, that if ever there was a ladylike girl upon earth, it was Anne Ashton.

"How do you like her, Anne?" asked Val Elster, dropping into the vacant place.

"Not much."

"Don't you? She is very handsome."

"Very handsome indeed. Quite beautiful. But still I don't like her."

"You would like her if you knew her. She has a rare spirit, only the old dowager keeps it down."

"I don't think she much likes you, Val."

"She is welcome to dislike me," returned Val Elster.