Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (1133 page)

“Hynd! When a young man talks nonsense, his youth is his excuse. At your time of life, you have passed the excusable age — even in the estimation of your friends.”

With those words Romayne turned away. The incorrigible Major instantly met the reproof inflicted on him with a smart answer. “Remember,” he said, “that I was the first of your friends to wish you happiness!” He, too, turned away — in the direction of the champagne and the sandwiches.

Meanwhile, Stella had discovered Penrose, lost in the brilliant assemblage of guests, standing alone in a corner. It was enough for her that Romayne’s secretary was also Romayne’s friend. Passing by titled and celebrated personages, all anxious to speak to her, she joined the shy, nervous, sad-looking little man, and did all she could to set him at his ease.

“I am afraid, Mr. Penrose, this is not a very attractive scene to you.” Having said those kind words, she paused. Penrose was looking at her confusedly, but with an expression of interest which was new to her experience of him. “Has Romayne told him?” she wondered inwardly.

“It is a very beautiful scene, Miss Eyrecourt,” he said, in his low quiet tones.

“Did you come here with Mr. Romayne?” she asked.

“Yes. It was by his advice that I accepted the invitation with which Lady Loring has honoured me. I am sadly out of place in such an assembly as this — but I would make far greater sacrifices to please Mr. Romayne.”

She smiled kindly. Attachment so artlessly devoted to the man she loved, pleased and touched her. In her anxiety to discover a subject which might interest him, she overcame her antipathy to the spiritual director of the household. “Is Father Benwell coming to us to-night?” she inquired.

“He will certainly be here, Miss Eyrecourt, if he can get back to London in time.”

“Has he been long away?”

“Nearly a week.”

Not knowing what else to say, she still paid Penrose the compliment of feigning an interest in Father Benwell.

“Has he a long journey to make in returning to London?” she asked.

“Yes — all the way from Devonshire.”

“From South Devonshire?”

“No. North Devonshire — Clovelly.”

The smile suddenly left her face. She put another question — without quite concealing the effort that it cost her, or the anxiety with which she waited for the reply.

“I know something of the neighbourhood of Clovelly,” she said. “I wonder whether Father Benwell is visiting any friends of mine there?”

“I am not able to say, Miss Eyrecourt. The reverend Father’s letters are forwarded to the hotel — I know no more than that.”

With a gentle inclination of her head, she turned toward other guests — looked back — and with a last little courteous attention offered to him, said, “If you like music, Mr. Penrose, I advise you to go to the picture gallery. They are going to play a Quartet by Mozart.”

Penrose thanked her, noticing that her voice and manner had become strangely subdued. She made her way back to the room in which the hostess received her guests. Lady Loring was, for the moment, alone, resting on a sofa. Stella stooped over her, and spoke in cautiously lowered tones.

“If Father Benwell comes here to-night,” she said, “try to find out what he has been doing at Clovelly.”

“Clovelly?” Lady Loring repeated. “Is that the village near Winterfield’s house?”

“Yes.”

CHAPTER II.

THE QUESTION OF MARRIAGE.

As Stella answered Lady Loring, she was smartly tapped on the shoulder by an eager guest with a fan.

The guest was a very little woman, with twinkling eyes and a perpetual smile. Nature, corrected by powder and paint, was liber ally displayed in her arms, her bosom, and the upper part of her back. Such clothes as she wore, defective perhaps in quantity, were in quality absolutely perfect. More adorable colour, shape, and workmanship never appeared, even in a milliner’s picture-book. Her light hair was dressed with a fringe and ringlets, on the pattern which the portraits of the time of Charles the Second have made familiar to us. There was nothing exactly young or exactly old about her except her voice, which betrayed a faint hoarseness, attributable possibly to exhaustion produced by untold years of incessant talking. It might be added that she was as active as a squirrel and as playful as a kitten. But the lady must be treated with a certain forbearance of tone, for this good reason — she was Stella’s mother.

Stella turned quickly at the tap of the fan. “Mamma!” she exclaimed, “how you startle me!”

“My dear child,” said Mrs. Eyrecourt, “you are constitutionally indolent, and you want startling. Go into the next room directly. Mr. Romayne is looking for you.”

Stella drew back a step, and eyed her mother in blank surprise. “Is it possible that you know him?” she asked.

“Mr. Romayne doesn’t go into Society, or we should have met long since,” Mrs. Eyrecourt replied. “He is a striking person — and I noticed him when he shook hands with you. That was quite enough for me. I have just introduced myself to him as your mother. He was a little stately and stiff, but most charming when he knew who I was. I volunteered to find you. He was quite astonished. I think he took me for your elder sister. Not the least like each other — are we, Lady Loring? She takes after her poor dear father.
He
was constitutionally indolent. My sweet child, rouse yourself. You have drawn a prize in the great lottery at last. If ever a man was in love, Mr. Romayne is that man. I am a physiognomist, Lady Loring, and I see the passions in the face. Oh, Stella, what a property! Vange Abbey. I once drove that way when I was visiting in the neighbourhood. Superb! And another fortune (twelve thousand a year and a villa at Highgate) since the death of his aunt. And my daughter may be mistress of this if she only plays her cards properly. What a compensation after all that we suffered through that monster, Winterfield!”

“Mamma! Pray don’t — !”

“Stella, I will
not
be interrupted, when I am speaking to you for your own good. I don’t know a more provoking person, Lady Loring, than my daughter — on certain occasions. And yet I love her. I would go through fire and water for my beautiful child. Only last week I was at a wedding, and I thought of Stella. The church was crammed to the doors! A hundred at the wedding breakfast! The bride’s lace — there; no language can describe it. Ten bridesmaids, in blue and silver. Reminded me of the ten virgins. Only the proportion of foolish ones, this time, was certainly more than five. However, they looked well. The Archbishop proposed the health of the bride and bridegroom; so sweetly pathetic. Some of us cried. I thought of my daughter. Oh, if I could live to see Stella the central attraction, so to speak, of such a wedding as that. Only I would have twelve bridesmaids at least, and beat the blue and silver with green and gold. Trying to the complexion, you will say. But there are artificial improvements. At least, I am told so. What a house this would be — a broad hint, isn’t it, dear Lady Loring? — what a house for a wedding, with the drawing-room to assemble in and the picture gallery for the breakfast. I know the Archbishop. My darling, he shall marry you. Why
don’t
you go into the next room? Ah, that constitutional indolence. If you only had my energy, as I used to say to your poor father.
Will
you go? Yes, dear Lady Loring, I should like a glass of champagne, and another of those delicious chicken sandwiches. If you don’t go, Stella, I shall forget every consideration of propriety, and, big as you are, I shall push you out.”

Stella yielded to necessity. “Keep her quiet, if you can,” she whispered to Lady Loring, in the moment of silence that followed. Even Mrs. Eyrecourt was not able to talk while she was drinking champagne.

In the next room Stella found Romayne. He looked careworn and irritable, but brightened directly when she approached him.

“My mother has been speaking to you,” she said. “I am afraid — ”

He stopped her there. “She
is
your mother,” he interposed, kindly. “Don’t think that I am ungrateful enough to forget that.”

She took his arm, and looked at him with all her heart in her eyes. “Come into a quieter room,” she whispered.

Romayne led her away. Neither of them noticed Penrose as they left the room.

He had not moved since Stella had spoken to him. There he remained in his corner, absorbed in thought — and not in happy thought, as his face would have plainly betrayed to any one who had cared to look at him. His eyes sadly followed the retiring figures of Stella and Romayne. The colour rose on his haggard cheeks. Like most men who are accustomed to live alone, he had the habit, when he was strongly excited, of speaking to himself. “No,” he said, as the unacknowledged lovers disappeared through the door, “it is an insult to ask me to do it!” He turned the other way, escaped Lady Loring’s notice in the reception-room, and left the house.

Romayne and Stella passed through the card-room and the chess-room, turned into a corridor, and entered the conservatory.

For the first time the place was a solitude. The air of a newly-invented dance, faintly audible through the open windows of the ballroom above, had proved an irresistible temptation. Those who knew the dance were eager to exhibit themselves. Those who had only heard of it were equally anxious to look on and learn. Even toward the latter end of the nineteenth century the youths and maidens of Society can still be in earnest — when the object in view is a new dance.

What would Major Hynd have said if he had seen Romayne turn into one of the recesses of the conservatory, in which there was a seat which just held two? But the Major had forgotten his years and his family, and he too was one of the spectators in the ballroom.

“I wonder,” said Stella, “whether you know how I feel those kind words of yours when you spoke of my mother. Shall I tell you?”

She put her arm round his neck and kissed him. He was a man new to love, in the nobler sense of the word. The exquisite softness in the touch of her lips, the delicious fragrance of her breath, intoxicated him. Again and again he returned the kiss. She drew back; she recovered her self-possession with a suddenness and a certainty incomprehensible to a man. From the depths of tenderness she passed to the shallows of frivolity. In her own defense she was almost as superficial as her mother, in less than a moment.

“What would Mr. Penrose say if he saw you?” she whispered.

“Why do you speak of Penrose? Have you seen him to-night?”

“Yes — looking sadly out of his element, poor man. I did my best to set him at his ease — because I know
you
like him.”

“Dear Stella!”

“No, not again! I am speaking seriously now. Mr. Penrose looked at me with a strange kind of interest — I can’t describe it. Have you taken him into our confidence?”

“He is so devoted — he has such a true interest in me,” said Romayne — ”I really felt ashamed to treat him like a stranger. On our journey to London I did own that it was your charming letter which had decided me on returning. I did say, ‘I must tell her myself how well she has understood me, and how deeply I feel her kindness.’ Penrose took my hand, in his gentle, considerate way. ‘I understand you, too,’ he said — and that was all that passed between us.”

“Nothing more, since that time?”

“Nothing.”

“Not a word of what we said to each other when we were alone last week in the picture gallery?”

“Not a word. I am self-tormentor enough to distrust myself, even now. God knows I have concealed nothing from you; and yet — Am I not selfishly thinking of my own happiness, Stella, when I ought to be thinking only of you? You know, my angel, with what a life you must associate yourself if you marry me. Are you really sure that you have love enough and courage enough to be my wife?”

She rested her head caressingly on his shoulder, and looked up at him with her charming smile.

“How many times must I say it,” she asked, “before you will believe me? Once more — I have love enough and courage enough to be your wife; and I knew it, Lewis, the first time I saw you! Will
that
confession satisfy your scruples? And will you promise never again to doubt yourself or me?”