Майн Рид
The Child Wife
Chapter Forty.
A Cautious Baronet
The baronet looked a little blank, as the open parlour door discovered inside a “party” he had no intention of calling upon.
Accustomed to such surprises, however, he was not disconcerted. He had some knowledge of the ex-guardsman’s character. He knew he was in ill-luck; and that under such circumstances he would not be exactingly inquisitive.
“Aw, Swinton, my dear fellaw,” he exclaimed, holding out his kid-gloved hand. “Delighted to see you again. Madam told me she expected you home. I just dropped in, hoping to find you returned. Been to Paris, I hear?”
“I have,” said Swinton, taking the hand with a show of cordiality.
“Terrible times over there. Wonder you came off with a whole skin?”
“By Jove, it’s about all I brought off with me.”
“Aw, indeed! What mean you by that?”
“Well; I went over to get some money that’s been long owing me. Instead of getting it, I lost what little I carried across.”
“How did you do that, my dear fellaw?”
“Well, the truth is, I was tempted into card-playing with some French officers I chanced to meet at the Mille Colonnes. It was their cursed écarté. They knew the game better than I; and very soon cleared me out. I had barely enough to bring me back again. I thank God I’m here once more; though how I’m going to weather it this winter, heaven only knows! You’ll excuse me, Sir Robert, for troubling you with this confession of my private affairs. I’m in such a state of mind, I scarce know what I’m saying. Confound France and Frenchmen! I don’t go among them again; not if I know it.”
Sir Robert Cottrell, though supposed to be rich, was not accustomed to squandering money – upon men. With women he was less penurious; though with these only a spendthrift, when their smiles could not be otherwise obtained. He was one of those gallants who prefer making conquests at the cheapest possible rates; and, when made, rarely spend money to secure them. Like the butterfly, he liked flitting from flower to flower.
That he had not dropped in hoping to find Mr Swinton, but had come on purpose to visit his wife, the craven husband knew just as well as if he had openly avowed it. And the motive, too; all the more from such a shallow excuse.
It was upon the strength of this knowledge that the ex-guardsman was so communicative about his financial affairs. It was a delicate way of making it known, that he would not be offended by the offer of a trifling loan.
Sir Robert was in a dilemma. A month earlier he would have much less minded it. But during that month he had met Mrs Swinton several times, in the Long Walk, as elsewhere. He had been fancying his conquest achieved, and did not feel disposed to pay for a triumph already obtained.
For this reason he was slow to perceive the hint so delicately thrown out to him.
Swinton reflected on a way to make it more understandable. The débris of the frugal déjeuner came to his assistance.
“Look!” said he, pointing to the picked bones of the herring with an affectation of gaiety, “look there, Sir Robert! You might fancy it to be Friday. That fine fish was purchased with the last penny in my pocket. To-morrow is Friday; and I suppose I shall have to keep Lent still more austerely. Ha! ha! ha!”
There was no resisting such an appeal as this. The close-fisted aristocrat felt himself fairly driven into a corner.
“My dear fellaw!” said he, “don’t talk in that fashion. If a fiver will be of any service to you, I hope you will do me the favour to accept it. I know you won’t mind it from me?”
“Sir Robert, it is too kind. I – I – ”
“Don’t mention it. I shouldn’t think of offering you such a paltry trifle; but just now my affairs are a little queerish. I dropped a lot upon the last Derby; and my lawyer is trying to raise a further mortgage on my Devonshire estate. If that can be effected, things will, of course, be different. Meanwhile, take this. It may pass you over your present difficulty, till something turns up.”
“Sir Robert, I – ”
“No apology, Swinton! It is I who owe it, for the shabby sum.”
The ex-guardsman ceased to resist; and the five-pound note, pressed into his palm was permitted to remain there.
“By the bye, Swinton,” said the baronet, as if to terminate the awkward scene by obliging the borrower in a more business-like way, “why don’t you try to get something from the Government? Excuse a fellaw for taking the liberty; but it seems to me, a man of your accomplishments ought to stand a chance.”
“Not the slightest, Sir Robert! I have no interest; and if I had, there’s that ugly affair that got me out of the Guards. You know the story; and therefore I needn’t tell it you. That would be sure to come up if I made any application.”
“All stuff, my dear fellaw! Don’t let that stand in your way. It might, if you wanted to get into the Household, or be made a bishop. You don’t aspire to either, I presume?”
The ex-guardsman gave a lugubrious laugh.
“No!” he said. “I’d be contented with something less. Just now my ambition don’t soar extravagantly high.”
“Suppose you try Lord – , who has Government influence? In these troublous times there’s no end of employment, and for men whose misfortunes don’t need to be called to remembrance. Yours won’t stand in the way. I know his lordship personally. He’s not at all exacting.”
“You know him, Sir Robert?”
“Intimately. And if I’m not mistaken, he’s just the man to serve you; that is, by getting you some appointment? The diplomatic service has grown wonderfully, since the breaking out of these revolutions. More especially the secret branch of it. I’ve reason to know that enormous sums are now spent upon it. Then, why shouldn’t you try to get a pull out of the secret service chest?”
Swinton relit his pipe, and sat cogitating.
“A pipe don’t become a guardsman,” jokingly remarked his guest. “The favourites of the Foreign Office smoke only regalias.”
Swinton received this sally with a smile, that showed the dawning of a new hope.
“Take one?” continued the baronet, presenting his gold-clasped case.
Swinton pitched the briar-root aside, and set fire to the cigar.
“You are right, Sir Robert,” he said; “I ought to try for something. It’s very good of you to give me the advice. But how am I to follow it? I have no acquaintance with the nobleman you speak of; nor have any of my friends.”
“Then you don’t count me as one of them?”
“Dear Cottrell! Don’t talk that way! After what’s passed between us, I should be an ungrateful fellow if I didn’t esteem you as the first of them – perhaps the only friend I have left.”
“Well, I’ve spoken plainly. Haven’t I said that I know Lord – well enough to give you a letter of introduction to him? I won’t say it will serve any purpose; you must take your chances of that. I can only promise that he will receive you; and if you’re not too particular as to the nature of the employment, I think he may get you something. You understand me, Swinton?”
“I particular! Not likely, Sir Robert, living in this mean room, with the remembrance of that luxurious breakfast I’ve just eaten – myself and my poor wife!”
“Aw – by the way, I owe madam an apology for having so long neglected to ask after her. I hope she is well?”
“Thank you! Well as the dear child can be expected, with such trouble upon us.”
“Shall I not have the pleasure of seeing her?”
The visitor asked the question without any pretence of indifference. He felt it – just then, not desiring to encounter her in such company.
“I shall see, Sir Robert,” replied the husband, rising from his chair, and going toward the bedroom. “I rather suspect Fan’s en dishabille at this hour.”
Sir Robert secretly hoped that she was. Under the circumstances, an interview with her could only be awkward.
His wish was realised. She was not only en dishabille, but in bed – with a sick headache! She begged that the baronet would excuse her from making appearance!
This was the report brought back from the bedroom by her go-between of a husband. It remained only for the visitor to make good his promise about the letter of introduction.
He drew up to the table, and wrote it out, currente calamo.
He did not follow the usual fashion, by leaving the envelope open. There was a clause or two in the letter he did not desire the ex-guardsman to become acquainted with. It concluded with the words: “Mr Swinton is a gentleman who would suit for any service your lordship may be pleased to obtain for him. He is a disappointed man…”
Wetting the gum with the tip of his aristocratic tongue, he closed the envelope, and handed the epistle to his host.
“I know,” said he, “Lord A – will be glad to serve you. You might see him at the Foreign Office; but don’t go there. There are too many fellaws hanging about, who had better not know what you’re after. Take it to his lordship’s private residence in Park Lane. In a case like yours, I know he’d prefer receiving you there. You had better go at once. There are so many chances of your being forestalled – a host of applicants hungering for something of the same. His lordship is likely to be at home about three in the afternoon. I’ll call here soon after to learn how you’ve prospered. Bye, my dear fellaw! good-bye!”
Re-gloving his slender aristocratic fingers, the baronet withdrew – leaving the ex-guardsman in possession of an epistle that might have much influence on his future fate.
Chapter Forty One.
A Scene in Park Lane
In Park Lane, as all know, fronting upon Hyde Park, are some of the finest residences in London. They are mansions, mostly inhabited by England’s aristocracy; many of them by the proudest of its nobility.
On that same day on which Sir Robert Cottrell had paid his unintentional visit to Mr Richard Swinton, at the calling hour of the afternoon an open park phaeton, drawn by a pair of stylish ponies, with “flowing manes and tails,” might have been seen driving along Park Lane, and drawing up in front of one of its splendid mansions, well-known to be that of a nobleman of considerable distinction among his class.
The ribbons were held by a gentleman who appeared capable of manipulating them; by his side a lady equally suitable to the equipage; while an appropriate boy in top-boots and buttons occupied the back seat.
Though the gentleman was young and handsome, the lady young and beautiful, and the groom carefully got up, an eye, skilled in livery decoration, could have told the turn-out to be one hired for the occasion.
It was hired, and by Richard Swinton; for it was he who wielded the whip, and his wife who gave grace to the equipage.
The ponies were guided with such skill that when checked up in front of the nobleman’s residence, the phaeton stood right under the drawing-room windows.
In this there was a design.
The groom, skipping like a grasshopper from his perch, glided up the steps, rang the bell, and made the usual inquiry.
His lordship was “at home.”
“You take the reins, Fan,” said Swinton, stepping out of the phaeton. “Keep a tight hold on them, and don’t let the ponies move from the spot they’re in – not so much as an inch!”
Without comprehending the object of this exact order, Fan promised to obey it.
The remembrance of mare than one scene, in which she had succumbed to her husband’s violence, secured compliance with his request.
Having made it, the ex-guardsman ascended the steps, presented his card, and was shown into the drawing-room.
Chapter Forty Two.
The Power of a Pretty Face
It was the front room of a suite into which Mr Swinton had been conducted – a large apartment furnished in splendid style.
For a time he was left alone, the footman, who officiated, having gone off with his card.
Around him were costly decorations – objects of vertu and luxe– duplicated in plate-glass mirrors over the mantel, and along the sides of the room, extending from floor to ceiling.
But Mr Swinton looked not at the luxurious chattels, nor into the mirrors that reflected them.
On the moment of his being left to himself, he glided toward one of the windows, and directed his glance into the street.
“It will do,” he muttered to himself, with a satisfied air. “Just in the right spot, and Fan – isn’t she the thing for it? By Jove! she shows well. Never saw her look better in her life. If his lordship be the sort he’s got the name of being, I ought to get an appointment out of him. Sweet Fan! I’ve made five pounds out of you this morning. You’re worth your weight in gold, or its equivalent. Hold up your head, my chick! and show that pretty face of yours to the window! You’re about to be examined, and as I’ve heard, by a connoisseur. Ha! ha! ha!” The apostrophe was soliloquised, Fan was too far off to hear him.
The chuckling laugh that followed was interrupted by the re-entrance of the footman, who announced in ceremonial strain: “His lordship will see you in the library.” The announcement produced on his lordship’s visitor the effect of a cold-water douche. His gaiety forsook him with the suddenness of a “shot.”
Nor did it return when he discovered the library to be a somewhat sombre apartment, its walls bedecked with books, and the windows looking into a courtyard at the back. He had anticipated an interview in the drawing-room that commanded a view of the street.
It was a disappointment to be regretted, and, combined with the quiet gloom of the chamber into which he had been ushered, argued ill for the success of his application.
“Your business, sir?” demanded the august personage into whose presence he had penetrated. The demand was not made in a tone of either rudeness or austerity. Lord – was noted for a suavity of manners, that, in the eyes of the uninitiated, gave him a character for benevolence! In answer to it, the ex-guardsman presented his letter of introduction. He could do no more, and stood awaiting the result.
But he reflected how different this might be if the interview had been taking place in the drawing-room, instead of that dismal repository of books.
“I am sorry, Mr Swinton,” said his lordship, after reading Sir Robert’s letter, “sorry, indeed, that I can do nothing to serve you. I don’t know of a post that isn’t filled. I have applicants coming to me every day, thinking I can do something for them. I should have been most happy to serve any friend of Sir Robert Cottrell, had it been in my power. I assure you it isn’t.”
Richard Swinton was disconcerted – the more so that he had spent thirty shillings in chartering the pony phaeton with its attendant groom. It was part of the five pounds borrowed from the obliging baronet. It would be so much cash thrown away – the sprat lost without catching the salmon.
He stood without knowing what to say. The interview seemed at an end – his lordship appearing wearied of his presence, and wishing him to be gone.
At this crisis an accident came to his aid. A squadron of “Coldstreams” was passing along the Park drive. Their bugle, sounding the “double-quick,” was heard in the interior of the dwelling. His lordship, to ascertain the cause of the military movement, sprang up from the huge leathern chair, in which he had been seated, and passed suddenly into the drawing-room, leaving Mr Swinton outside in the hall. Through the window Lord – saw the dragoons filing past. But his glance dwelt, not long upon them. Underneath, and close in to the curb-stone, was an object to his eyes a hundred times more attractive than the bright uniforms of the Guards. It was a young and beautiful lady, seated in an open phaeton, and holding the reins – as if waiting for some one who had gone into a house.
It was in front of his own house; and the party absent from the phaeton must be inside. It should be Mr Swinton, the very good-looking fellow who was soliciting him for an appointment!
In a trice the applicant, already half dismissed, was recalled into his presence – this time into the drawing-room.
“By the way, Mr Swinton,” said he, “you may as well leave me your address. I’m anxious to oblige my friend, Sir Robert; and although I can speak of nothing now, who knows – Ha! that lady in the carriage below. Is she of your belonging?”
“My wife, your lordship.”
“What a pity to have kept her waiting outside! You should have brought her in with you.”
“My lord, I could not take the liberty of intruding.”
“Oh, nonsense! my dear sir! A lady can never intrude. Well, leave your address; and if anything should turn up, be sure I shall remember you. I am most anxious to serve Cottrell.”
Swinton left the address; and with an obsequious salute, parted from the dispenser of situations.
As he drove back along the pavement of Piccadilly, he reflected to himself that the pony equipage had not been chartered in vain.
He now knew the character of the man to whom he had addressed his solicitation.
Chapter Forty Three.
To the Country
There is but one country in the world where country-life is thoroughly understood, and truly enjoyable. It is England!
True, this enjoyment is confined to the few – to England’s gentry. Her farmer knows nought of it; her labourer still less.
But the life of an English country gentleman leaves little to be desired!
In the morning he has the chase, or the shooting party, complete in their kind, and both varied according to the character of the game. In the evening he sits down to a dinner, as Lucullian as French cooks can make it, in the company of men and women the most accomplished upon earth.
In the summer there are excursions, picnics, “garden parties”; and of late years the grand croquet and tennis gatherings – all ending in the same desirable dinner, with sometimes a dance in the drawing-room, to the family music of the piano; on rarer occasions, to the more inspiriting strains of a military band, brought from the nearest barracks, or the headquarters of volunteers, yeomanry, or militia.
In all this there is neither noise nor confusion; but the most perfect quiet and decorum. It could not be otherwise in a society composed of the flower of England’s people – its nobility and squirearchy – equal in the social scale – alike spending their life in the cultivation of its graces.
It was not strange that Captain Maynard – a man with but few great friends, and lost to some of these through his republican proclivities – should feel slightly elated on receiving an imitation to a dinner as described.
A further clause in the note told him, he would be expected to stay a few days at the house of his host, and take part in the partridge-shooting that had but lately commenced.
The invitation was all the more acceptable coming from Sir George Vernon, of Vernon Hall, near Sevenoaks, Kent.
Maynard had not seen the British baronet since that day when the British flag, flung around his shoulders, saved him from being shot. By the conditions required to get him clear of his Parisian scrape, he had to return instanter to England, in the metropolis of which he had ever since been residing.
Not in idleness. Revolutions at an end, he had flung aside his sword, and taken to the pen. During the summer he had produced a romance, and placed it in the hands of a publisher. He was expecting it soon to appear.
He had lately written to Sir George – on hearing that the latter had got back to his own country – a letter expressing grateful thanks for the protection that had been extended to him.
But he longed also to thank the baronet in person. The tables were now turned. His own service had been amply repaid; and he hesitated to take advantage of the old invitation – in fear of being deemed an intruder. Under these circumstances the new one was something more than welcome.
Sevenoaks is no great distance from London. For all that, it is surrounded by scenery as retired and rural as can be found in the shires of England – the charming scenery of Kent.
It is only of late years that the railway-whistle has waked the echoes of those deep secluded dales stretching around Sevenoaks.
With a heart attuned to happiness, and throbbing with anticipated pleasure, did the late revolutionary leader ride along its roads. Not on horseback, but in a “fly” chartered at the railway station, to take him to the family mansion of the Vernons, which was to be found at about four miles’ distance from the town.
The carriage was an open one, the day clear and fine, the country looking its best – the swedes showing green, the stubble yellow, the woods and copses clad in the ochre-coloured livery of autumn. The corn had been all cut. The partridges, in full covey, and still comparatively tame, were seen straying through the “stubs”; while the pheasants, already thinned off by shot, kept more shy along the selvedge of the cover. He might think what fine sport was promised him!
He was thinking not of this. The anticipated pleasure of shooting parties had no place in his thoughts. They were all occupied by the image of that fair child, first seen on the storm-deck of an Atlantic steamer, and last in a balcony overlooking the garden of the Tuileries; for he had not seen Blanche Vernon since.
But he had often thought of her. Often! Every day, every hour!
And his soul was now absorbed by the same contemplation – in recalling the souvenirs of every scene or incident in which she had figured – his first view of her, followed by that strange foreshadowing – her face reflected in the cabin mirror – the episode in the Mersey, that had brought him still nearer – her backward look, as they parted on the landing-stage at Liverpool – and, last of all, that brief glance he had been enabled to obtain, as, borne along by brutal force, he beheld her in the balcony above him.
From this remembrance did he derive his sweetest reflection. Not from the sight of her there; but the thought that through her interference he had been rescued from an ignominious death, and a fate perhaps never to be recorded! He at least knew, that he owed his life to her father’s influence.
And now was he to be brought face to face with this fair young creature – within the sacred precincts of the family circle, and under the sanction of parental rule – to be allowed every opportunity of studying her character – perhaps moulding it to his own secret desires!
No wonder that, in the contemplation of such a prospect, he took no heed of the partridges straying through the stubble, or the pheasants skulking along the edge of their cover!
It was nigh two years since he had first looked upon her. She would now be fifteen, or near to it. In that quick, constrained glance given to the balcony above, he saw that she had grown taller and bigger.
So much the better, thought he, as bringing nearer the time when he should be able to test the truth of his presentiment.
Though sanguine, he was not confident. How could he? A nameless, almost homeless adventurer, a wide gulf lay between him and this daughter of an English baronet, noted in name as for riches, What hope had he of being able to bridge it?
None, save that springing from hope itself: perhaps only the wish father to the thought.
It might be all an illusion. In addition to the one great obstacle of unequal wealth – the rank he had no reason to consider – there might be many others.
Blanche Vernon was an only child, too precious to be lightly bestowed – too beautiful to go long before having her heart besieged. Already it may have been stormed and taken.
And by one nearer her own age – perhaps some one her father had designed for the assault.
While thus cogitating, the cloud that flung its shadow over Maynard’s face told how slight was his faith in fatalism.
It commenced clearing away, as the fly was driven up to the entrance of Vernon Park, and the gates were flung open to receive him.
It was quite gone when the proprietor of that park, meeting him in the vestibule of the mansion, bade him warm welcome to its hospitality.
