Barbara Rebell - Marie Belloc Lowndes

Скачать книгу

opinion of himself. And then she seemed so simply, so unaffectedly glad to see him! Within the next hour, he was gradually brought to tell her, both of the long talk with Berwick—Lucy had proved an apt student of political economy within the last year—even of the proposed newspaper and the editorship, of which the offer, coming from anyone else, would, he said, "have tempted me."

      "Ah! but you think Mr. Berwick ought not to start such a paper—that it might do him harm?" Lucy looked up with quick intelligent eyes.

      Boringdon had scarcely said so—in so many words—yet, yet—certainly yes, that was what he had meant, and so, "Exactly!" he exclaimed; "and if I don't join in, the scheme will probably come to nothing." Lucy allowed her softened gaze to linger on the face of the man who had gradually made his way into her steadfast heart. How good, how noble he was, she thought, and, how unconscious of his own goodness and nobility!

      The girl was in that stage of her mental development when the creature worshipped must necessarily appear heroic. Two men now fulfilled Lucy's ideal—the one was her father, the other Oliver Boringdon. Poor Laxton, with his humble passion for herself, his half-pretended indifference to the pleasures and duties of the British officer's life in time of profound peace, his love of hunting and rough out-door games—all seemed to make him most unheroic in Lucy's eyes. She was dimly aware that Captain Laxton's love for her was instinctive, that he was attracted in spite of himself; and the knowledge perplexed and angered her. She knew well, or thought she knew well, the sort of woman with whom the young soldier ought to have fallen in love—the well-dressed, amusing, "smart" (odious word, just then coming into fashion!) type of girl, whom he undoubtedly, even as it was, much admired. But Oliver Boringdon—oh! how different would be the natural ideal of such a man.

      Lucy was only now beginning to see into her own heart, and she still believed that her regard for Boringdon was "friendship." Who could hesitate as to which was the better part—friendship with Boringdon, or marriage with Laxton?

      "I—I want to ask you something." Lucy's heart was beating fast.

      "Yes, what is it?" He turned sharply round.

      "I've been reading the life of Edmund Burke."

      He bent forward eagerly. "It's interesting, isn't it?"

      "Yes, yes, indeed it is! But I want to ask you why a hundred years have made such a change? Why it is that now a young man who has every aptitude for political life——" Lucy hesitated, the words were not really her own, they had been suggested—almost put into her mouth—by Oliver's mother.

      "Yes?" he said again, as if to encourage her.

      "Why such a person cannot now accept money from—from—a friend, if it will help him to be useful to his country?"

      "You mean"—he went straight to the point—"why cannot I take money from James Berwick?" He was looking at her rather grimly. He had not thought that Mrs. Boringdon would find the girl so apt a pupil.

      Poor Lucy shrank back. "Forgive me," she said, in a low tone, "I should not have asked you such a question."

      "You have every right," he said, impulsively. "Are we not friends, you and I? Perhaps you did not know that this was an old quarrel between my mother and myself. Berwick did once make me such an offer, but I think you will see—that you will feel—with me that I could not have accepted it."

      General Kemp, coming down half an hour later, found them still eagerly discussing Edmund Burke, and so finding, told himself, and a little later told his wife, that the world had indeed changed in the last thirty years, and that he, for his part, thought the old ways of love were better than the new.

       Table of Contents

      "Il est plus aisé d'être sage pour les autres que de l'être pour soi-même."

      La Rochefoucauld.

      Chancton Priory had been, from his earliest boyhood, even more James Berwick's home than was his uncle's house over at Fletchings, and it was incomparably dearer to him in every sense than Chillingworth, which came to him from his dead wife, together with the huge fortune which gave him such value in Mrs. Boringdon's eyes. The mistress of the Priory had always lavished on Lord Bosworth's nephew a measure of warm affection which she might just as reasonably have bestowed on his only sister, but Miss Berwick was not loved at Chancton Priory, and, being well aware that this was so, she rarely came there. Indeed, her brother's real love for the place, and for Madame Sampiero, was to her somewhat inexplicable: she knew that at the Priory he felt far more at home than he was at Fletchings, and the knowledge irked her.

      In truth, to James Berwick one of the greatest charms of Chancton Priory had come to be the fact that when there he was able almost to forget the wealth which had come to him with such romantic fulness when he was only four-and-twenty. Madame Sampiero, Doctor McKirdy, and Mrs. Turke never seemed to remember that he was one of the richest men in the kingdom, and this made his commerce with them singularly agreeable.

      Certain men and women have a curious power of visualising that fifth dimension which lies so near and yet so far from this corporeal world. For these favoured few, unseen presences sometimes seem to cast visible shadows—their intuition may now and then be at fault, but on the other hand, invisible guides will sometimes lead them into beautiful secret pastures, of which the boundaries are closely hidden from those of their fellows who only cultivate the obvious. It was so with James Berwick, and, as again so often happens, this odd power—not so much of second sight as of divination—was quite compatible with much that was positive, prosaic, and even of the earth earthy, in his nature and character. He attributed his undoubted gift to his Stuart blood, and was fond of reminding himself that the Old Pretender was said always to recognise a traitor when approached by one in the guise of a loyal servant and friend.

      On the afternoon following that spent by him at the Boringdons', Berwick walked across to Chancton from Fletchings. He came the short way through the Priory park—that which finally emerged by a broad grass path into the lawn spreading before the Elizabethan front of the great mass of buildings. As he moved across, towards the porch, he thought the fine old house looked more alive and less deserted than usual, and having passed through the vestibule, and so into the vast hall, he became at once aware of some influence new to the place.

      He looked about him with an eager, keen glance. A large log fire was burning in the cavernous chimney, but then he knew himself to be expected: to that same cause he attributed the rather unusual sight of a china bowl full of autumn flowers reflected in the polished mahogany round table, on which, as he drew near, he saw three letters, addressed in McKirdy's stiff clear handwriting, lying ready for the post. Berwick, hardly aware of what he was doing, glanced idly down at them: then, as he moved rather hastily away, he lifted his eyebrows in surprise—one was addressed to his sister, Miss Arabella Berwick, at Fletchings; yet another, with every possible formality of address, to the Duchess of Appleby and Kendal, at Halnakeham Castle; while the third bore the name of another great lady living some ten miles from Chancton, and to whom—Berwick would have been ready to lay any wager—no communication had been sent from the Priory for some twenty odd years, though both she and the kindly Duchess had in the long ago been intimate with Madame Sampiero.

      Once more Berwick looked round the hall, and then, abruptly, went out again into the open air, and so made his way across at right angles to a glass door giving direct access to a small room hung with sporting prints and caricatures, unaltered since the time it had been the estate room of Madame Sampiero's father. Here, at least, Berwick felt with satisfaction, everything was absolutely as usual. He went through into a narrow passage, up a short steep staircase to the upper floor, and so to the old-fashioned bedroom and dressing-room which no one but he ever occupied, and which were both still filled with his schoolboy and undergraduate treasures. There was a third room on each of the floors composing the two-storied building which had been added to the Priory some fifty years before, and these extra rooms—two downstairs, one upstairs—were sacred to Mrs. Turke.

Скачать книгу