The Gipsy: A Tale (Vols I & II). G. P. R. James
understand you, my dear sister, I understand you!" exclaimed Lord Dewry; "but do not be in a hurry. My carriage is ordered, and cannot be many minutes ere it delivers you from my presence. In the mean time, I will not interrupt you further.--Good-morning, Mrs. Falkland!"
"Good-morning," she replied; and her brother walked towards the door. As he laid his hand upon the lock, he turned for a single glance at his sister; but Mrs. Falkland was writing on, with a rapid and easy pen, in the clear and running movements of which there was evidently not the slightest impediment from one extraneous thought in reference to the conversation which had just passed between them. Anger, hatred, malice, even active scorn itself, man can bear or retort; but utter indifference is more galling still. So Lord Dewry found it; and throwing open the door with a degree of force that made sundry of the smaller articles of furniture dance about the room, he issued forth in search of his carriage, with wounded pride and diminished self-importance.
Gliding gracefully down the corridor towards the breakfast-room was, at that very moment, Marian de Vaux, his niece; and the sight of her beautiful face and form, with its calm and easy movements, was well calculated to tranquillize and sooth. But Lord Dewry had never been famous for being easily soothed. Dr. Johnson is said to have liked a "good hater;" and had he carried the predilection a little further, the peer was just the man to merit that sort of approbation. He was not only a good hater, but he was, and always had been, the man of all others to nourish his anger, and render it both stout and permanent. Now, during the early part of the preceding evening, before he found "mettle more attractive" in his quarrel with Colonel Manners, the noble lord had, as he always did, paid very great attention to Marian de Vaux. He had sat by her, he had talked to her, he had exerted himself to be agreeable to her, when it was very evident that he was not much disposed to be agreeable to any one. But now, as Marian approached, gave her hand, and wished him good-morning, he let her hand drop as soon as he had taken it, and answered her salutation by telling her he was in haste.
Somewhat surprised at the cloud upon her uncle's brow, his flashing eye, and abrupt manner, Marian drew back, in order to let him pass, and Lord Dewry took two steps more along the passage. Then recollecting himself, however, and remembering how strange his conduct might appear, he turned, and made the whole seem stranger than ever, as all people do when, with a heart very full of feelings which they are afraid or ashamed to picture in their nakedness, they attempt to explain the strange behaviour to which those feelings have prompted them.
"I am obliged to quit the house, Marian," he said, in a quick and agitated manner; "disagreeable occurrences have taken place, which compel me, in justice to myself, to withdraw: the whole business is an unfortunate one, and I am afraid it may be some time before we meet again; but I will write--I will write, and explain myself fully. Good-by! I hear the carriage!" And with a rapid step he walked on, leaving Marian de Vaux not a little confounded by all that had passed, and entirely misconstruing the few abrupt and unsatisfactory sentences which her uncle had pronounced.
She heard his step sound along the passage, down the stairs, and through the hall; listened to his voice giving some directions to his servant, and then to the closing of the carriage-door, and the grating roll of the wheels over the gravel before the house. Then mentally exclaiming, "This is all very strange, and very unfortunate!" she went on towards the breakfast-room, into which a servant had just carried the urn, without closing the door behind him. The sound of her cousin Isadore's voice, speaking gayly with Colonel Manners, issued forth as she approached; but Marian de Vaux was agitated and alarmed; and feeling that she must have time to think over her uncle's words, and to compose her mind, ere she mingled with any society, she turned to the music-room, and had entered it before she was aware that any one was there.
It was a beautiful idea of Plato, and not at all an unchristian idea, that the sins which people have committed during life, and which in this case were termed manes, had an existence after death, and were the instruments for punishing those who had committed them--the worm that dieth not, and the fire that cannot be quenched. But had Plato seen into the bosom of Lord Dewry, he would have perceived that his theory might be carried a little further; and that the sins and passions do not wait till we are dead in order to torment their authors, but punish them even in this world, not alone in their consequences, but by their very existence. After having laboured manibus pedibusque to render every member of his sister's household as uncomfortable as possible, the noble lord sunk back in his carriage, with his frame exhausted and his whole heart on fire with that flaming up of painful memories and violent passions which the occurrences we have related had excited. Unfortunately, however, it happens in the wonderful arrangement of this our earthly dwelling-place, that here our evil qualities not only torment ourselves, but others also; and the noble lord might have consoled himself with the certainty that he had, for the time at least, destroyed much tranquillity, and turned joy into bitterness.
Of all who suffered on the occasion, Marian de Vaux perhaps suffered most. Mrs. Falkland, for her part, had been very much offended, but she respected her brother too little to permit his ill temper or rudeness to produce any lasting effect upon her. Edward de Vaux believed that his father's present mood would not be long ere it yielded to circumstances; and Colonel Manners, though of course considerably annoyed by what had taken place between Lord Dewry and himself, was not aware of what had passed afterward; and consequently did not enter, as he would otherwise have done most feelingly, into the uncomforts of Mrs. Falkland and his friend De Vaux. But with Marian the matter was different. She knew nothing of all the occurrences of the morning: she had seen her uncle retire on the preceding night, apparently dropping his dispute with Colonel Manners; and she never, for a moment, connected his extraordinary conduct of that day with the disagreement of the preceding evening.
In almost all cases of apprehension and uncertainty, the human mind has a natural tendency to connect the occurrence of the moment, whatever it may be, with the principal object of our wishes and our feelings at the time. It matters not whether the two things be as distinct and distant as the sun is from the moon; association in an instant spins a thousand gossamer threads between them, forming a glistening sort of spider-like bridge, scarcely discernible to other people's eyes, but fully strong enough for fancy to run backwards and forwards upon for ever.
Thus, then, was it with poor Marian de Vaux. It had been settled that her marriage with her cousin was to take place on the day she became of age--that is to say, in about three weeks. Now, whether she was pleased with the arrangement or not, we do not at all intend to say; but she had made up her mind to it completely; and the first thing that Lord Dewry's broken sentences suggested to her mind was, that some difficulty had occurred in regard to her union with Edward, and that his father had withdrawn the consent he had been before so willing to give.
When Lord Dewry left her, she was as pale as death; and though before she reached the breakfast-room the colour had come back into her cheek, yet all her former ideas were so completely scattered to the four winds of heaven, that she felt it would be absolutely necessary to think what her own conduct, under such circumstances, ought to be, before she met any of the party; and especially before she met her cousin Edward, as towards him, of course, the regulation of her behaviour was most important. She turned, then, as we have before said, to the music-room, and entering it ere she perceived that any one was in it, found herself there alone with no other than Edward de Vaux.
Whether he had gone there purposely or accidentally--from a habit which some people have, of returning to take a look at places where they have spent happy moments, or from a sort of presentiment that he might find Marian there, we have no means of judging; but on her part the meeting certainly was unexpected, and being such, it would hardly be fair to look narrowly into her manner of receiving her lover's first salutation, which salutation was sufficiently warm.
As soon as she recollected herself, however, she turned at once to the subject of her thoughts. "But, Edward," she said, "this is a most unfortunate occurrence--in