Читать книгу The Silent Shore - John Bloundelle-Burton - Страница 9

Ida Raughton sat, on a bright June day of that year, in her pretty boudoir looking out on the well-kept gardens of a West End square, and thinking of an important event in her life that was now not very far off--her marriage. Within the last month she had become engaged, not without some earlier doubts on her part as to whether she was altogether certain of her feelings--though, afterwards, she told herself over and over again that the man to whom she was now promised was the only one she could ever love: and the wedding-day was fixed for the 1st of September. Her future husband was Gervase Occleve, Viscount Penlyn.

She was the only daughter of Sir Paul Raughton, a wealthy Surrey baronet, and had been to him, since her mother's death, as the apple of his eye--the only thing that to him seemed to make life worth living. It was true that he had distractions that are not uncommon to elderly gentlemen of means, and possessed of worldly tastes; perfectly true that Paris and Nice, and Ascot and Newmarket, as well as his clubs and his friends--not always male ones--had charms for him that were still very seductive; but, after all, they were nothing in comparison to his daughter's love and his love for her. Never during his long widowerhood, a widowerhood dating from her infancy, had he failed to make her life and happiness the central object of his existence; never had he allowed his pleasures to stand in the way of the study of her comfort. The best schools and masters when she was a child, the best friends and chaperons for her when womanhood was approaching, and when it had arrived, the greatest liberality as regards cheques for dressmakers, milliners, upholsterers, horses, etc., had been but a small part of his way of showing his devotion to her. And she had returned his affection, had been to him a daughter giving back love for love, and endeavouring in every way in her power to make him an ample return for all the thought and care he had showered on her. Of course he had foreseen that the inevitable day must come when--love him however much she might--she would still be willing to leave him, when she would be willing to resign being mistress of her father's house to be mistress of her husband's. His worldly knowledge, which was extensive enough for half-a-dozen ordinary men, told him clearly enough that the parent nest very soon palled on the bird that saw its way to building one for itself. Yet, when the blow fell, as he had known it must fall, he did not find that his philosophy enabled him to endure it very lightly. On the other hand, there was his love for her, and that bade him let her go, since it was for her happiness that she should do so.

"I promised her mother when she lay dying," he said to himself, "that my life should be devoted to her, and I have kept my vow to the best of my power. I am not going to break it now. Besides, it is part of a father's duty to see his daughter well married; and I suppose Penlyn is a good match. At any rate, there are plenty of other fathers and mothers who would like to have caught him for their girls."

That she should have made a sensation during her first season was not a thing to astonish Sir Paul, nor, indeed, any one else. Ida Raughton was as thoroughly beautiful a girl, when first she made her appearance in London society, as any who had ever taken their place in its ranks. Tall and graceful, and possessed of an exquisitely shaped head, round which her auburn hair curled in thick locks; with bright hazel eyes, whose expression varied in accordance with their owner's thoughts and feelings, sometimes sparkling with laughter and mirth, and sometimes saddened with tears as she listened to any tale of sorrow; with a nose the line of which was perfect, and a mouth, the smallness of which disguised, though it could not hide, the even, white teeth within, no one could look at Ida without acknowledging how lovely she was. Even other and rival débutantes granted her loveliness, and the woman who can obtain such a concession as this from her sisters has fairly established her right to homage.

As she sat at her boudoir window on this June day, thinking of her now definitely settled marriage, she was wondering if the life before her would be as bright and happy as the one she was leaving behind for ever. That--with the exception of the death of her mother, a sorrow that time had mercifully tempered to her--had been without alloy. Would the future be so? There was no reason to think otherwise, she reflected, no reason to doubt it. Lord Penlyn was young, handsome, and manly, the owner of an honoured name, and well endowed with the world's goods. Yet that would not have weighed with her had she not loved him.

She had asked herself if she did love him several times before she consented to give him the answer he desired, and then she acknowledged that he alone had won her heart. She recalled other men's attentions to her, their soft words, their desire to please; how they had haunted her footsteps at balls and at the Opera, and how no other man's homage had ever been so sweet to her as the homage of Gervase Occleve. At first--wishing still to be sure of herself--she would not agree to be his wife, telling him that she did not know her heart; but when he asked her a second time, after she had had ample opportunity for reflection, she told him he should have his wish.

"And you do love me, Ida?" he asked rapturously, perhaps boyishly, as they drove back from a large dinner-party to which they had gone at Richmond. "You are sure you do?"

"Yes," she said, "I am sure I do. I was not sure when first you asked me, but I am now."

"Then kiss me, darling, and tell me so. Otherwise I shall scarcely be able to believe it;" and he bent over her and kissed her, and she returned the kiss.

"I love you, Gervase," she said, blushing as she did so.

"You have made me supremely happy," he said to her after their lips had met; "happy beyond all thought. And, dearest, you shall never have cause to repent of it. I will be to you the best, the truest husband woman ever had. There shall be no shadow ever come over your life that I can keep away."

For answer she put her hand in his, and so they drove along the lanes that were getting thick with hawthorn and chestnut blossom, while ahead of them sounded the merry voices of others of the party who were on a four-in-hand. They had come down, a joyous company, from town in the afternoon, had dined at the "Star and Garter," and were now on their way home under the soft moonlight of an early summer evening. Sir Paul had been with them in the landau on the journey out, but on this return one he was seated on the top of the coach, talking to a lady whom he addressed more than once as "his dear old friend," and was smoking innumerable cigarettes. Probably he did not imagine for one moment that Lord Penlyn was going to take this opportunity of proposing to his daughter; but he had noticed that they seemed to enjoy each other's society very much, especially when they could enjoy it alone. And so, all things being suitable and harmonious, and the baronet having a heart beneath his exceedingly well-fitting waistcoat--and that a very big heart where Ida was concerned--had let them have the gratification of the drive home together.

"And you never loved any other man, Ida?" Gervase asked. "Forgive the question, but every lover likes to know, or think, that no one has ever been before him in the affection of the woman he loves."

"No," she answered, "never. You are the first man I have ever loved."

This had happened nearly a month ago, but as Ida sat in her boudoir her thoughts returned to the drive on that May night. Yes, she acknowledged, she loved him, and she loved him more and more every time she saw him. But as she recalled this conversation she also recalled the question he had asked her, the question as to whether she had ever loved any other man; and she wondered what had made him ask it. Could it be that it was supposed by some of their circle--though erroneously supposed, she told herself--that another man loved her? Perfectly erroneously, because that other man had never breathed one word of love to her; and because, though he would sometimes be in her society continually for perhaps a week, and then be absent for a month, he never, during all the time they were thus constantly meeting, paid her more marked attention than other men were in the habit of doing. Yet, notwithstanding this, it had come to her knowledge that it had been whispered about that Walter Cundall loved her.

This man, Walter Cundall, this reported admirer of hers, was well known in society, was in a way famous, though his fame was in the principal part due to the simplest purchaser of that commodity--to wealth. He was known to be stupendously rich, to be able to spend any large sum of money he chose in order to gratify his inclinations, to be able to look upon thousands as ordinary men looked upon hundreds, and upon hundreds as other men looked upon tens. This was the principal part of his fame; but there was a lesser, though a better part! It was true that he did spend hundreds and thousands, but, as a rule, he spent them quite as much upon others as upon himself. His fours-in-hand, his yachts and steam-yachts, his villa at Cookham, and his house in Grosvenor Place, as well as his villa at Cannes--to which a joyous party went every winter--were as much for his friends as for him. He gave dinners that men and women delighted in getting invitations to; but it was noticed that, though his chéf was a marvel, he rarely ate of anything but the soup and joint himself, and that, while others were drinking the best wine that Burgundy, or Aÿ, or Rheims could produce, he scarcely ever quenched his thirst with anything but a tumbler of claret. But he would sit at the head of his table with a smile of satisfaction upon his handsome face, contented with the knowledge that his guests were happy and enjoying themselves.

This man of whom Ida was now thinking and whose story may be told here, had commenced life at Westminster School, to which he had been put by his uncle, a rich owner of mines and woods in Honduras, from which place he paid flying visits to England once a year, or once in two years. The boy was an orphan, left by his mother to her brother's care, and that brother had not failed in his trust. The lad went to Westminster with the full understanding that Honduras must be his home when school days were over; but he knew that it would be a home of luxury and tropical splendour. There, after his school days, he passed some years of his life, attending to the mines, seeing to the consignments of shiploads of mahogany and cedar, going for days in the hills with no companions but the Mestizos and the Indians, and helping his uncle to garner up more and more wealth that was eventually destined to be his. Once or twice in the space of ten years he came to Europe, generally with the object of increasing their connection with London or Continental cities, and of looking up and keeping touch with his old schoolfellows and friends.

And then, at last, two or three years before this story opens, and when his uncle was dead, it came to be said about London that Walter Cundall, the richest man from the Pacific to the Gulf of Honduras, had taken a house in Grosvenor Place, and meant to make London more or less permanently his residence. The other places that have been mentioned were purchased one by one, and he used all his possessions--sharing them with his friends--by turn; but London was, as people said, his home. Occasionally he would go off to Honduras on business, or would rush by the Orient express to St. Petersburg or Vienna; but he loved England better than any other spot in the globe, and never left it unless he was obliged to do so.

This was the man whom gossip had said was the future husband of Ida Raughton--this tall, dark, handsome man, who was, when in England, a great deal by her side. But gossip had been rather staggered when it heard that, during Mr. Cundall's last absence of six months in the tropics, she had become the affianced wife of Lord Penlyn! It wondered what he would say when he came back, as it heard he was about to do very shortly, and it wondered why on earth she had taken Penlyn when she might have had Cundall. It talked it over in the drawing-rooms and the ball-rooms, at Epsom and on the lawn at Sandown, but it did not seem to arrive at any conclusion satisfactory to itself.

"I suppose the fact of it is that Cundall never asked her," one said to another, "and she got tired of waiting."

"I should have waited a bit longer on the off chance," the other said "Cundall's a fifty times richer fellow than Penlyn, and there's no comparison between the two. The one is a man of the world and a splendid fellow, and the other is only a boy."

"He isn't a bad sort of a boy though," said a third, "good-looking, and all that. And," he continued sententiously, "he has the pull in age. That's what tells! He is about twenty-five, and Cundall's well over thirty, isn't he?"

"Thirty is no such great age," said the first one, who, being over forty himself, looked upon Cundall also as almost a boy, "and, for my part, I think she has made a mistake!"

And that was what the world said: "She had made a mistake!" Did she think so herself, as she sat there that bright afternoon? No, that could not be possible! Ida Raughton was a girl with too pure and honourable a heart to take one man when she loved another. And we know what the gossips did not know, that no word of love had ever passed between her and Walter Cundall. The world was indulging in profitless speculations when it debated in its mind why Ida had not taken as a husband a man who had never spoken one word of love to her!